


Chilling Effect

by strange_glow



Series: Virus [10]
Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: F/M, M/M, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2020-03-06 13:06:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 45,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18851668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strange_glow/pseuds/strange_glow
Summary: Nagi gets his wish, though he may regret it with his lunatic elders along.Part 10 of Virus, where Yohji turns out to really have been an amnesiatic Esset agent, now trying to recover from the brainwashing.





	1. One

“Hey, telepath! Knock that shit off!” an irate male voice drew Brad out of his reading. “It’s not funny!”  
He looked at Schuldig, who was grinning at him like an orangutan. “Did you forget you were on an Esset transport?” He looked over at the other passenger who was glaring at them. Brad nodded and the man, a uniformed lower rank, settled back in his seat to sulk.   
Schuldig looked at him in mock shock with a gasp. “It speaks to me.”   
“I warned you about playing Twilight Zone,” Brad growled, trying very hard to keep his voice down.   
A moderate snorking snore from behind them indicated Yuuji’s nap was being disturbed by the noise. Aya nudged him and he shifted to half curl up on his other side in the seat, but did not wake up. Aya rolled his eyes and slouched.   
“Are you done being mad at me?” Schuldig asked Brad hopefully.   
Brad went back to his laptop and the news.   
Schuldig sighed silently. “You can not be mad at me forever.”  
“I can be mad at you until the end of time,” Brad said, not looking at him. The implication being the end of Schuldig’s time.   
“You’re over reacting.”   
Brad turned now to look at him, incensed. “Have I ever abandoned you?” he hissed.   
Schuldig did the yes-no head wobble thing. “Yes, but only temporarily—and you told me I would not bleed out. But that was a gun fight, and I left you in the hospital, getting a physical. There is a great difference there. I was shot, and it was rather painful until I passed out. And you might have been lying. You have a habit of doing that, you know,” he looked at him carefully. “Lying.”   
Brad’s right eye twitched. (Schuldig thought It was a good thing he could not start shooting in the plane; although, he had never let that stop him before.) “That has nothing to do with this.”   
“I’m just saying,” Schuldig defended just above a whisper. “But you did get a clean bill of health, isn’t that the important part here? You are in prime condition for your age. Esset will be pleased.” (He wondered if he should scream for help before those hands grabbed him and strangled him, or just give up and go quietly, because he could not take this much longer. He’d been 12 hours without Brad’s talent to help him in Shinjuku, and six hours so far in the normal world. His brain felt bruised, and there was always the other thing. He wanted to be held and kissed and told he was still loved, and not in danger of being pushed out of the plane at 30,000 feet. Or worse, be replaced when they landed.) “It’s not fair.”   
“I’m still mad at you,” Brad enunciated precisely and went back to reading his laptop.   
Schuldig sighed. It was going to be a long flight.

@ @ @

The hall outside the Council chamber was wide enough for a row of chairs and some potted plants. On the wall opposite the chairs hung the usual portrait of old toothbrush mustache, focused over the artist’s shoulder, presumably, with an imposing air of meeting destiny (or possibly incensed at seeing ‘destiny’ run for its life).   
“If I had a permanent marker….” Brad grumbled, glaring up at it.   
“Nope,” Yuuji warned. “None of that. That thing’s an original oil from a live sitting. They’d have your balls.”  
“Rumor has it they had one of His,” Schuldig muttered.  
The door opened and a uniformed usher let them know they could come in.   
It was early morning, and the smell of coffee pervaded the room. The drapes were still closed against the yet un-risen sun. A platter of pastries along with tongs, plates and paper napkins had already been disturbed. The old fashioned radiators along the walls pinged and banged as they heated up. The council must have had a serious reason for convening this early, not just because Schwarz's plane had come in at three am. The four of them (Nagi and Tot had not been called in) stood in a row at the open end of the U-shaped table. It was too early for some. There were stifled yawns and bleary eyes all around.  
/You want me to….?/ Schuldig offered against what he thought of as the brick wall.   
Brad ignored him. “Councilors,” he bowed courteously.   
“Welcome back, Agent Crawford,” Greifeldt said, rubbing one eye before focusing on them. A cup of coffee steamed before him in the as yet chill room. “Excellent work on your assignment,” he tapped the file on the table before him. “One question, though. Are you certain that the work Schulder did on the woman can not be claimed as brainwashing. That her confession is a false memory implant?”   
Schuldig bristled at the use of his real name. “They may try it, but her memory is her own. It will pass hypnotism and a lie detection test. Her confession can be traced back to her orders.”  
“Good, good,” Greifeldt picked up his coffee, sipped it and settled back in his chair. “She will be in Washington D.C. tomorrow evening. “That was a close one. It is still difficult to believe that such a nightmare would have gone un-detected except for extraordinary coincidence.” His gaze fell on Fujimiya.   
“We don’t actually know that,” Crawford said, irritated. “It may have been just that, an extraordinary coincidence. Any of the Ami agents involved might have heard of the attempt and crossed our paths.” He shot Aya an annoyed look, his lips a thin line of disapproval.   
“At any rate, well done, gentlemen,” Greifeldt said. “Your next assignment,” he focused on Crawford again. “Is a rather unusual one.” He shifted some papers around, stalling, then reluctantly got on with it. “Some documents have turned up regarding a matter that even the eldest of us had thought was nonsense. We’re sending your team to Antarctica.” He looked grave now. “If the ice has not crushed it, there is a base there. Not the weather research one that was detected by the United Nations, but supposedly a military experimental one. According to the recovered fragments, there may be—wunderwaffen buried there. While the Bell was dismantled as being too highly dangerous, these other—items—may be of interest. It’s also possible they are as outdated as the candlestick phone, but we have to take a chance and see. And it’s better that the UN does not get a hold of anything.”  
“Ant-arc-tica,” Brad said slowly. Had he actually heard right or had he suddenly gone insane from some undetected Shinjuku parasite?   
/Shall I brainwash him now into sending us to Cuba instead?/ Schuldig offered, sensing that in his shock, Brad had dropped his ‘shields’ with a crash.   
“Wasn’t all that junk science just faked up to frighten the Allies?” Brad asked. “Perhaps these papers….”  
“We can’t take chances,” Greifeldt stated. “There is talk of going in and drilling into the large lakes under the ice down there. The civil war has kept the Ami’s busy, but with them distracted, other parties are a little too ready to go. Russia for instance.”  
“Oh, shit,” Schuldig murmured aloud.   
Brad looked at him.   
/The UFOs,/ Schuldig returned his gaze. /He’s thinking that if the Russians get the flying saucers, if they are there…./  
/Bullshit,/ Brad thought at him.   
/He believes it,/ Schuldig shifted his eyes to Greifeldt and back with an arch look.   
“Will you two stop that,” Greifeldt ordered. “You’re in a council meeting. Have the decency to interact with the rest of us.”   
Brad looked back at him. “Sorry, Herr Reichsführer,” he said deferentially. “It’s just—a bit of a shock. Surely a military team would be better for this mission.”   
“Too obvious,” Greifeldt said. “You would be on a cruise, with your families. Something will go wrong with the ship and you will then ‘stumble onto the hidden base’, if anyone discovers you.”  
/Verdammter Hurensohn, was ist das für ein idiotischer Bullshit? Mein Gott verdammter Arsch gefickt für ein stinkendes UFO-Gerücht? Zum Teufel damit!/ Schuldig cussed vehemently in Brad’s head. /And now is when we finally say kiss my lily white ass to Esset, shoot everyone and defect, right?/ he glared at Brad sullenly.   
/Shut up, Schuldig,/ Brad ordered. 

@ @ @

“YES!” Nagi pumped his fists in the air and did a little foot stomping dance in a circle. “I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! SECRET ANTARTICAN BASE! I KNEW IT!”  
“It won’t be a secret much longer if you keep yelling about it,” Brad warned, loosening his tie. His blood pressure was over ruling the medication. Again. Everyone in the restaurant was glancing over at them with concern. The place being a tourist trap for hikers and Rosencruz students, even in the off skiing season, it was rather full.   
“Schuldig, make anyone who understood me forget it,” Nagi told the red head.   
“Nagi, sit down and behave yourself,” Brad ordered.   
Nagi grabbed the back of the chair he had jumped up out of and sat down. “Stick in the mud.”   
“You don’t get to order the telepath around. Only I do,” Brad reminded him.   
Nagi stuck his tongue out at him, then picked up his beer and chugged it.   
Brad’s face reddened.   
Nagi turned to look at the rest of the restaurant’s clientele who had gone back to minding their own business, “Anyone else here who speaks Japanese, raise your hands?” he said in a conversational tone.   
Aya started to raise his hand, then put it down hastily, feeling foolish.   
“I rest my case,” Nagi said, after another long swallow of beer.   
Brad still was not used to the idea that Nagi was of age to drink. He wasn’t sure Tot drinking alcohol would make one bit of difference, but she had ordered some sort of fizzy strawberry concoction anyway. And then he realized something. “You found the papers, didn’t you?” he said in a low warning tone.   
Nagi looked innocent, which he did much better than say, Schuldig or Yuuji. “Well, I did happen to see something and call attention to, it, yes.”   
/Can we go back in time and put him back in the trashcan?/ Schuldig asked.   
Brad shot him a glare.   
“Oooh, what did you say?” Nagi challenged the telepath.   
“Not a thing,” Schuldig demurred, sipping his own brew pointedly.   
“And what did Traugott have to say about it?” Brad asked evenly.   
Nagi shrugged. “’How interesting’, and then she shunted it off to the council with the latest box of top secret trash.”   
“So much for burning everything and killing everyone who knew anything,” Brad sighed.   
“Next war, we leave the bodies piled up for them to see it was dysentery and starvation, caused by lice,” Schuldig leaned back to let the waitress put his order on the table. “No more sanitary procedures, just rotting corpses everywhere,” he waved a hand dismissively.   
Brad looked at his nicely grilled and still steaming steak grimly. Then put steak sauce on it.   
“So they can use them as propaganda props anyway. Look at Dresden,” Yuuji commented.   
Brad frowned again and deliberately cut into his medium rare steak. “Subject change.”  
“You started it,” Schuldig unnecessarily pointed out.   
Brad stopped chewing and looked at him.   
Schuldig suddenly found his meal very interesting.   
“What I don’t like about this ‘cruise’ idea is that NeuSchwabenland is on the side close to South Africa,” Yuuji reached across to snag the salt shaker. “Can Zombies swim?”  
“It’s not exactly in NeuSchwabenland,” Nagi said, spearing a paprika sprinkled steak fry. He had ordered the same as Brad, a thick rib eye steak and large cut fries, but had added a green salad. “The whole expedition Ritscher led, which only lasted a month, was a misdirection of sorts. The planes supposedly used to crisscross over NeuSchwabenland on photographic runs and dropping the marker dart things were actually going further, rather than just circling around. That’s why no one has found the markers. They were dropping a meter and a half long lead weighted metal dart bombs, and reading the sound profiles.”   
“So where the hell is this supposed ‘paradise’ Donitz blabbed about?” Yuuji asked.  
“Another distraction,” Nagi said, obviously gaga over this whole thing. “The base is in East Antarctica, under the Filchner Ice shelf, near to the Recovery Glacier. Supposedly there’s a place where the glacier curves around the basalt of the mountain range. A calm spot in the glacial stream.” He made an example on the table with his fist in back of the salt shaker and a hand moving to depict the glacier moving past it.   
“Why the hell are you so excited about this?” Schuldig asked. “It’s freezing there, people die from just being alive there.”   
“We are not ‘just people’,” Nagi stated solemnly.   
“Oh, look, he has little anime swastikas in his eyes,” Schuldig pointed at him to Brad. “This is what you get for not turning left instead of reich when we killed those old bastards.”   
Brad sighed, putting down the hand with his fork in it for a moment, counting to ten. “If we hadn’t gone back, we would have been hunted down for the rest of our considerably curtailed lives. You would not believe the crap I saw heading our way.”  
“You promised me freedom, not freezing,” Schuldig nagged. “There will be no passing it off as a typo.”  
“Eat your damned shrimp and shut up,” Brad cut another piece off his steak.   
“Well, at least you two are talking again,” Yuuji commented, and picked up his beer. 

@ @ @ 

“Yuu-chan!” his mother glomped onto him, standing on tip-toes to look at him nose to nose. “Why didn’t you come home last night?”   
“Because,” he said, giving her a hug. “Ask your old man, he’s part of the council.”  
She looked around him at Aya, who was standing there like the statue of Awkward on the little porch. “What’s the real excuse?” she narrowed her eyes at him.   
Aya pinkened. That cat was long out of the bag. He refused to say anything, hiding behind his fringe.  
“Ha,” she said, and let her son go. “Well get in here, before the neighbors talk,” she ordered.   
“What would they talk about?” Yuuji asked, amused.   
“I don’t know, make something up,” she waved a hand over her shoulder. “Come, come, tell me all about Shinjuku.”  
Yuuji had a messenger bag strapped over his shoulder. “Actually I do have something for you,” he said as they followed her into the kitchen, her lair in the house as it were. Working at counters all day long, she seemed unable to sit down on a sofa at home, preferring to continue her mixing and preparing in the form of cooking.   
He set the bag on the table and pulled out the files from Mephisto Hospital. “Dr. Mephisto sent you copies of some medical research that might interest you.” He laid them on the table.   
She set down three mugs and grabbed them up as if they were diamond bracelets, her eyes sparkling. “Really?” She flicked through them and sat down to read, all efforts at playing hostess forgotten.   
Yuuji dumped the coffee carafe and started a fresh pot, then filled up two mugs from the hot water pot and set them back next to the tea canister. Aya helped himself to a green tea bag, and on second thought, put a pekoe one in the mug for Chieko-san.   
“What a good little daughter in law you make. Too bad you have balls,” Chieko said, the main focus of her attention still on the reports.   
Aya’s eyes went wide and he drained of color.   
Yuuji smirked at him. ‘I warned you,’ he mouthed.   
Aya was not mollified. He had every reason to believe she might decide the balls had to go. No, wait, she had over 50 grandchildren already. He was saved. His balls unclenched. He glared at Yuuji.   
Yuuji looked dismayed and hurt. It was patently fake.  
“But why does this density of such a fine layer of brain tissue show up on his machines and not ours?” Chieko looked at her son.   
“Don’t ask me,” Yuuji said, “I have no idea. All I know is that the man does that creepy Philippine bare hand surgery thing and it’s not pig’s blood and trickery. They do have a lot of fancy toys though. Like a hologram com system on their wrists.” He pointed to his watch.   
“I wish I could meet this man. He’s an absolute genius.” Chieko sighed over the medical reports like a school girl with a crush.   
“No,” Yuuji was firm. “Not only should you never go in there, Dr. Mephisto is a confirmed misogynist. The only women he’ll get near have to be near death.   
“I could swallow poison.” She looked at her son, and a very scary and conniving smile spread her lips. “Yuuuu-chan,” she reached over and plucked at his t-shirt sleeve. “Why don’t you do Mummy a favor.”  
Yuuji’s green eyes went suspicious.   
“Go back in there and get me some of that man’s….” she made an all too familiar little gesture.   
Aya snorted and nearly choked on a mouthful of tea.  
“Well why not! He’s gay, isn’t he?” She asked. “And what better way to see what makes him tick?”  
“You’re disgraceful,” Yuuji stated and got up to get a cup of coffee.   
She pouted and went back to reading the reports.   
Aya thought maybe Yuuji had not been lying about how evil his parents were after all, but kept his mouth shut. 

@ @ @

“I will need a big bear fur coat, like a Russian prince,” Schuldig stated.   
They were in the dorm guest room yet again, packing.   
“You’ll get a thermal insulate parka like the rest of us,” Brad was sorting through his clothing.  
“Buy me a fur coat,” Schuldig made it an almost order, identifiable as a demand, but not quite an order.   
Brad dropped a stack of clean socks into the suitcase and looked at him. “And why, pray tell, do you think you have the cachet to act like a trophy wife?”  
“Because I am the trophy wife, remember?” Schuldig tossed his head. “Younger? Prettier?”  
Brad couldn’t help snorting with laughter, but he quickly suppressed it.   
“You are done being mad at me?” Schuldig asked against hope.   
“No, I’m just down from a homicidal boil to an abusive simmer,” Brad said meanly, and located some turtle neck sweaters in the trunk he had ordered brought up from storage.   
“It’s not like I’m asking for chinchilla, for gottsake, it’s just bear. Smelly, old, warm, bear.”   
Brad looked at him in exasperation. “You have your own money, buy your own coat.”  
“You never buy me anything,” Schuldig pouted, and looked for a pair of thermal long johns he was sure he had left from that thing in Siberia. Of course he had bought them after the fact, but that was the point, they were here somewhere for just such an event. “And if you insist on being mad at me, I will need something to keep me warm.”  
“You’re planning on replacing me with a ‘smelly, old, warm bear’?” Brad smirked.   
“I’m planning on replacing you with a little red Ferrari,” Schuldig corrected. “But the coat will keep me warm in Antarctica!” he raised his voice and glared at Brad.   
Brad arched an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “I see. The tide has turned and now you’re mad at me, is that it?”  
“You always have to have everything your way! I want something my way for a change!”   
Brad walked over to him, an unreadable look on his handsome face. Schuldig resisted the urge to cringe. But instead of sucker punching him with that raising right hand (a give away, there, because Brad was a ‘south paw’ boxer) he stroked the copper red hair back a little and leaned in to kiss him lightly on the lips. “I am done being mad at you, okay?” those gorgeous brown eyes looked into his, and a flash of amber went across them like a nictitating membrane with out the creepy skin effect.   
“You were checking to see if I would fall for more of your fake lovey-dovey,” Schuldig said, very much aware of the feathery lightness of that kiss. He wanted a lot more than that pathetic excuse for a kiss.   
“No, I was checking to see if anyone would interrupt us in the next hour or so,” Brad smiled, his voice low and sultry.   
“I still want a fur coat,” Schuldig put his arms around Brad’s neck and kissed him a lot better than that silly little peck. “You’re not going to fuck your way out of this.”   
Brad laughed and leaned his forehead on Schuldig’s. “You’re right, I over reacted.” He moved to murmur in Schuldig’s ear. “Next time, you can see how much fun it wasn’t to get Mephisto’s idea of a full physical.”   
Schuldig pulled back and looked at him in alarm. Brad gave him that look that said no more arguments if you want sex. He sighed, and did not argue. 

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

  
Brad went to the ‘person’ most likely to blame.  
“From what I understand, the scientific investigations into the presumed lakes under the ice in that region have been a disappointment,” Traugott said. She was seated behind her desk in the school chancellor’s office. “Still, you never know what can be hidden underground. It’s quite possible they fill up and drain on a regular basis as the ice unplugs under the pressure of the water build up.”   
“I wonder,” Brad said. It was plausible. Lakes did intermittently drain away into caverns underneath that were caused by salt mines, sand stone, water softened earth washing away, what ever. Water always got out. “But what is this really all about?” He was seated in one of the nicely padded arm chairs that had been put in for visitors to the office. The uncomfortable hard backed wooden ones waited along one wall to be exchanged out for students sent in under discipline. The French doors were open onto the little garden, a sight he glanced at with remembered annoyance. A flower sweetened balmy breeze came in quiet waves, lightly rustling the leaves of a pair of climbing plants potted beside the doors. The things were taking over the room. He looked back at the combinate creature behind the desk; ostensibly a normal young Swiss-German woman, with the soul of a Japanese god-knows-what, but you wouldn’t want to seriously upset it. “Schuldig tells me Greifeldt is certain that there are UFOs there.”  
She looked amused. “You of all people shouldn’t be so skeptical.”  
He thought about this for a long moment. “I don’t know what to think. Have you grown so bored here that you’d forge documents just to entertain Nagi’s enthusiasms? Send us on a wild goose chase? You’ll break the boy’s heart.”  
She put on an air of gentile shock, a hand to her chest. “Really, Herr Crawford, you malign me most indecorously,” she said mockingly, then dropped the charade like a brick. “My kind prefer balance. We like everything to run smoothly. We leave it up to you monkeys to throw everything over and make messes.”  
Brad remained skeptical. “UFOs,” he said.   
She looked bored. “Unidentified flying objects, not necessarily of extra-planetary origin.”  
He could tell this was going to be another battle. It didn’t help that the creature he suspected was an honest to god Kami was outside the time line and he couldn’t read her future moves. “Does extra-planetary life exist?”  
“How the hell would I know?” she smiled mildly.   
“How the hell did your kind get here?” he countered.   
She shrugged. “Read the book. We’ve always been here.”   
Brad gave up. He seriously doubted that was the truth, or that he would ever get it out of her without losing his mind in the process. “And if there are UFOs based under the ice in Antarctica, German or otherwise?”  
“Well then hooray for our team,” she smiled, placing her hands flat on the desk top and leaned forward encouragingly. “Get out there and find them. Why must you always be such a pessimist? Young Naoe has the right idea. Be adventurous, go conquer the unknown. Enjoy life. Think of the stories you’ll have to tell your grandchildren,” she faked wide eyes behind her glasses. “Oh, but I forget! Like your surviving cousins, you take an oath never to breed. Oh, well, do it for your self.” She grinned at him, sitting back, smug in knowing she had struck a raw spot.   
Brad frowned. What the hell was the point of being a ‘test tube baby’ if people kept reminding him of his damned blood line? Served him right for accusing her of making stuff up, he supposed. No, if anyone had made stuff up, it was Donitz; either being sarcastic or vindictive at his trial by the Americans at Nuremburg. 

@ @ @

 

“But why are you and the paternal unit going?” Yuuji complained, shoving his hair behind one ear. “Doesn’t he have work to do?” he added suspiciously. He was watching his mother pack.   
“Your father and I deserve a vacation after all you’ve put us through,” she informed him, holding up one cocktail dress on a hanger in front of herself in the mirror, then another, then switching them again. She frowned slightly, then bundled them both into a modern version of the steamer trunk; half the size of a side by side fridge-freezer, made of hardened plastic and fake lizard skin textured, on castor wheels.   
“I put you through?” he squawked. “I was put through.”   
“Selfish boy,” she said off handedly, scrutinizing some blouses. She counted them out, switched a few to each hand, shoved one set back in the closet and hung the rest in the case.   
“You know this cruise thing is a cover, right?” he was suddenly a little worried.  
“Of course I do,” she turned to look at him. “Yuu-chan, what is wrong with you?”   
“After being kidnapped by those CIA creeps, do you really think you should be off the res?” he asked reluctantly.   
She squinted one eye at him, widening the other, a sort of crazy look he knew well from the whole ‘everyone else is doing it’ stage of his childhood. “Go to your room.”  
Yeah and the same statement, too. “No,” he said firmly, “If we weren’t already in your room, I’d send you to yours. I’m all grown up now, Mum, and you have to deal with my questions and concerns like a grown up.”   
“Okay, I am a grown up; your father is grown up; we are twice as grown up as you,” she retorted. “Vacation,” she stated with emphasis. “We are taking a vacation. A nice cruise to Hawaii and then down to oooh and aaaahh at the great big icebergs and things, and buy cheap crap from the natives in South America, or what ever, and maybe see a few gigantic man eating sharks off the coast of Australia, because I am going no where near a place full of snakes and spiders,” she swiped a hand in the air to wipe that idea off the board.   
“You know this isn’t just a vacation,” he crossed his arms.   
She went back to packing. “And your point? Do you have any idea of how many other people are going?”  
He calculated. “….maybe about a thousand and half?” he guessed. It was a cruise ship. Those things were like small cities on the sea.   
“How the hell else are we going to pass this off as a ‘harmless cruise’?” she rummaged through the closet’s over head shelf and pulled down a prettily patterned carry case. This she took over to the dresser. It opened up like a fishing tackle box. “Yuuji, your father and I are getting old. As much as I hate to say it,” she gave her self a dirty look in the dresser mirror. “This is ‘The Thing’ of a life time, like Tutankhamun’s tomb. Who knows what might be down there? Frozen bodies, flying saucers, hidden treasures they didn’t dump on that stupid Polish train, who knows? And if there’s nothing, well then, we’ve got some tchotchkes from a lovely cruise and lots of embarrassing photos of your father in floral shirts holding outrageously decorated drinks in cocoanuts. Well worth, it if you ask me.” She uncapped and sniffed a few perfumes, trying to decide which ones to take.   
Yuuji wobble-nodded in refusal. “You’re not getting old. Just—a bit weathered. You know the sea air is going to turn you to leather.” He cheered up a little with that idea possibly discouraging her.   
She turned to look at him. “What is your problem?” she demanded.   
“Well, you should stay home and stay safe,” he admitted.   
“What has Crawford seen?” she asked coolly.   
He blinked. “Nothing that I know of. I haven’t even talked to him about it. Yet.”   
She shook a finger at him. “You’re supposed to be talking him about getting some woman knocked up or at least filling up a jar with viable sperm. In fact tell him that; one or the other, but full.” She turned to yank a drawer open so hard she nearly lost it and fumbled it back into the rails. “Honestly, he could make an effort. In fact, I know he can, I saw that report.”  
“Mom,” he protested. “Gross.”   
“Well, you seem to think I should stay home and make babies,” she sniped.   
Yuuji’s face went expressionless. “Actually, no, forget it. Go on vacation. And really, don’t tell me what you and Pop get up to, please? Just don’t.”   
“I meant in the lab, you ass,” she started packing the make up case with paints, perfumes and jewelry. “Have I shown you the photos of my sweet little biological grand-babies?” he saw how she grinned evilly in the mirror. “All. Fifty. Eight. Of them?”  
“No, just—no,” he held his hands up. Fifty-eight? What the hell?!   
“Besides, what are you worried about? That pretty little good luck charm of yours is going along, no? Even if an iceberg tried to hit the boat, it would crack into shaved ice or something, right?”  
“I don’t think it works quite that way,” Yuuji said dryly. “He’d probably be the only survivor left floating on the berg and get picked up by a crew of Greek sailors who moonlight as male strippers.”  
She turned to look at him again. “Well, anyway, stop fussing and go black mail that man into having a baby or two. Or fifteen.” She added, her tone matching her son’s for sarcasm.   
Yuuji rolled his eyes heavenward and vacated the room. 

@ @ @ 

“My mother wants you to have babies.”   
Brad looked at Yuuji in startled concern. “What have you been drinking? Did she give you anything odd?” They were all in one of the now empty classrooms, going over the logistics of the trip. Esset was essentially moving troops and equipment in this mission, and it was just as problematical as a military mission. Hard to keep an op covert when there were over a thousand people involved. But at least a cruise was less obvious than a few thousand military aged and healthy young men marching from North Africa into an open borders Europe had been, and people had been idiots over that.   
Aya was looking at Yuuji, too, a growing alarm and suspicion fighting with his obvious desire to kill someone. Anyone. Mostly Crawford. But Yuuji could loose something not too vital on the side.   
“His mother wants him to convince you to get some woman pregnant,” Schuldig said sullenly. “For the good of the Brotherhood.”  
“Don’t read my mind with out permission,” Yuuji warned the redhead, then put a hand out to block Aya from killing Schuldig. He was getting so used to preventing Fujimiya-mayhem, it didn’t even take a second thought. Aya shoved the sword he’d drawn out six inches back into its sheath and sulked.   
“I’m—conflicted,” Nagi said, and looked it. He was sitting at one of the student desks with his laptop open on it. “I don’t know what would be more disgusting. You being….”  
Schuldig slapped a hand over his mouth from behind, for once getting there faster than Nagi could deflect him. “Don’t. Say. It.” He warned.   
“You’re right,” Nagi pushed the hand away with two fingers. “Not enough brain bleach in the world.”   
“Never mind that nonsense,” Brad’s voice was scathingly commanding. “The council is not exactly hiding anything outside of what’s in Nagi’s stupid file, but there are so many overlapping desires for the outcome of this trip, I can’t even begin to trace the timelines further than half a week. Bad enough the boat is going to have a waste cycling problem a few days out of Yokohama.”   
“Fucking cruise line second hand piece of junk,” Nagi muttered, his fingers dancing over the laptop keys. “I’ve put the replacement parts on the list. Anti aircraft guns are being bolted on under fake deck vents, and the torpedo tubes were fitted into the forward cargo and tested last week. They started out by reinforcing the hull in sensitive target areas. The council has been busy turning this thing into a battle ship. Why the hell didn’t they just buy a second hand battleship?”   
“Um, maybe because it would look like a battleship?” Schuldig said with feigned innocence, sitting on the next desk over and putting his feet on the chair before it.   
Nagi gave him a phony pout, and went back to his Excel file. “Full kitchen staff, youth workers for the grunt work, entertainment—not sure about the mime-clown-juggling thing, but hey--,” he grimaced. “Small orchestra, medical—that would be your mother—” he glanced up at Sarazawa. “Enough med supplies to handle major surgeries; machine shop; wood shop….If this were a space ship, we’d be more than set. Except for the hydroponics thing,” he added thoughtfully. “Zero grav must be rough on plants in reality. Maybe we should have a hydroponics thing….”   
“Reality,” Brad bopped him on the head with a pencil in passing as he paced. “Back to it. So, hidden in all this we have a contingent of 700 fully trained wehrmacht. What do they think we’re doing, invading? The penguins will put up resistance?”   
“I hope this is not going end up like that movie where the tentacle thing comes up from the sea and squishes people down through the plumbing into a charnel house in the lower deck,” Schuldig said dismally.   
“’Deep Rising’,” Yuuji pointed at him. “Cool movie, but they should have made the sequel. They leave it open at the end. They wash up on the island and something is up on the mountainside, crashing through the trees.”   
“No one makes good movies any more. Now it’s all sex and criminals being idolized as heroes,” Schuldig complained. “Warm fuzzy shows about women locked up in prison making orange jumpsuits popular. What the hell does that say about society?”  
“Note to staff; we are the bad guys,” Brad reminded them drolly. “Reality. On a mission to recover a hidden Nazi base and all the presumed evil goodies there in. Which is another thing. If a word of this gets out, we’re going to be dealing with ‘good guys’. We’re on a ship flying the Hakenkreuz flag, leaving Yokohama; Japan being our staunchest ally; stopping at Hawaii, now owned by Japan; then aiming for Argentina and Australia, both Japan and Esset friendly if not completely allies now. Big damned boat, middle of the ocean. We’re going to be vulnerable to all sorts of satellite tracking and drones. Someone’s going to wonder why we don’t just head for Norway or England, if this is just an innocent little Strength Through Joy cruise. And the closer we get to Queen Maud Land, aka NeuSchwabenland, we are going to draw attention. ‘Oh, look, what are the Nazies doing there? Could it be—gasp!—A Secret Antarctican Base’?” his eyes cut to Nagi mockingly. “Next thing you know, there are gunboats off the starboard bow, demanding we drop anchor, drop trousers and submit to an invasive inspection.”   
“There are laws,” Nagi stated, ignoring the jab at his lifelong dream. “We’ll haul their asses into court if they fuck with us. If they survive fucking with us.”  
“Ooo, scary. Lawyers,” Brad scoffed. Terrifying lawyers was one of his favorite sports. At 20, he had picked his teeth with their rib bones, so to speak.  
“Nazi Lawyers.” Nagi reminded him.   
“He’s got a point. Add some to the list,” Schuldig motioned to the laptop.   
Nagi hesitated, flipping a mental coin, if not a real one mentally, then added ‘lawyers, international law, five of,’ to the list.   
“I’m sure that will keep the Somali pirates off,” Yuuji grumbled, sitting on an open window sill.   
Nagi corrected the file: “Lawyers, international law, five of, weapons training.”   
“Better,” Brad said, starting to pace again. 

@ @ @ 

“Nagi-kun, it’s huge!” Tot exclaimed as they drove into the parking lot of the cruise line dock and a ship loomed over them.   
“This is one of the smaller boats,” Nagi informed her. Ours is out there at the edge of the harbor,” he pointed where they could not yet see past the other ships.   
“Oooo!” she went wide eyed despite the contact lenses that already widened them (and Nagi worried about sometimes, but hey, if she could survive those shoes…)   
Nagi’s head was full of all sorts of things, the least of them being the wedding they were scheduled for in Honolulu. When the prospect had come up, they had discussed it. Get married sooner, or wait for Hawaii. There were three shinto shrines in Honolulu, so they had picked the most traditional looking one; and then the ‘official’ military ceremony would be held on the ship. Kimono and hakama, then the big dress and full uniform whites. Why the hell did it have to be so complicated? And Sarazawa’s parents standing in for the bride’s was a nice touch, but if Brad and Shuu made asses of themselves, he was going to break a few bones and put them out of order for a few weeks.   
Back to the important part, he told himself, searching for an empty parking spot. Antarctica. It gave him chills just thinking about it. Literally.   
It was going to take two months to get there via a nice meandering we’re-all-so-innocent cruise. And either it was Jeraldo-time, or there were ice caverns full of molding and rusting technology that had surpassed anything the world of its time had known. But the Germans were either too frightened of their own destructive power to use it, or too weak from losses to train for and implement with the enemy closing in on them. Hitler had at that point fired Goering and Himmler as traitors because they were hitting him with the truth. He’d left everything to Admiral Donitz, who’s baby this apparently was. The implications were there. Donitz had the key to the ammo locker and enough sass to put it right under the Ami’s nose, knowing they wouldn’t believe it. A paradise. How the hell could there be ‘a paradise’ under the ice? Hot springs? Tech that made it a self contained bio-dome?   
Finally, he found an empty spot just as some one else moved out, and parked the darned rental car. All their luggage except his personal messenger bag and Tot’s backpack were already on the cargo transport ship tasked with loading everything onto the cruise ship. He put the little sign up with the keys hanging from it for the rental company. All they had to do now was find their dock and wait for the water taxi to take them out. He would call the rental company and tell them which parking space number it was in while they waited.   
It seemed a shame to just rush from the airport to the harbor. He was not that familiar with Yokohama and would have liked to look around. But that was the way Esset was. They said jump, you jumped—or they shot at your feet.   
Tot kept her arm linked in his as they walked what seemed like a mile to the dock. People passed them with rolling cases and minor arguments or laughter, coming from or going to the ships' quays. No one in their contingent had worn a uniform at this point, so they were lost in the crowds. Everything was to be kept low key.   
Antarctica. He sill couldn’t really believe it. That the internet rumors might be true. He who had grown up with the Elders of Thule, Talents, and the whole Hidden Reich thing, met a girl who was an actual android, and now worked with a Kami, could not dare to believe the secret base was real until he actually saw it. He also felt a little guilty that it meant more to him than the whole wedding thing.   
Thank goodness Tot wasn’t a mind reader. She was smart and she was sparkly pretty. She had dyed her hair a pastel mix of greens and blues for the trip, and dressed in a Victorian doll’s sailor dress of pale blue and white, her shapely legs clad in white stockings with little blue anchors printed at the ankles, and he did not care what Brad or anyone else said; after six years, she was still what he wanted. Just—he’d have to tough it through the wedding.   
Weddings.   
Wedding night.   
No, he’d rather think about what could be beneath the ice. It was much less embarrassing in these casual fit cargo pants. 

@ @ @

Schuldig looked around the ship’s cabin. “Ooo, aren’t we special,” he grinned. “Luxury suite.” He turned to look at Crawford, who had walked over to the closet and opened it. “We’re going to tear it up and get it all sticky. Look at the Art Deco wall sconces to hang panties on.”  
“I don’t like the balcony,” Brad said. “The whole getting hit by a giant wave thing. Maybe we can change to an inside suite.”   
Schuldig frowned, mood murdered. “Are we going to get hit by a giant wave?”   
“I haven’t looked, but still,” Brad went to open his suitcase.   
Schuldig looked around. “Where is my stuff?” he said slowly.   
Brad used his talent, the gold flashing across his eyes behind his silver framed glasses. Then he laughed. “Oh, nice try.” He went to get a wooden hanger from the closet. “They put your stuff in your cabin.” He slid a pair of slacks onto the hanger and smoothed them out, then picked up the jacket.   
“My cabin?” Schuldig asked, momentarily shocked, then angry. “Oh, that is going too far.”   
“Yes, very. It’s on the other side of the ship, way down at the other end and three decks below. But, it also has a balcony.” Brad hung up the suit and grabbed another hanger.   
Schuldig stomped out, swearing.   
Brad frowned at the king size bed. What the hell anyway?

@ @ @

By the time the ship was ready to up anchor and set sail, the sunset had almost finished, and had been a very long day. Stuck way out at the opening of the harbor by the size of the ship and the traffic in the busy harbor, the only sign they were embarking on the journey were the last of the cargo loaders and sea taxies shifting to motor away. To a ship like this, the tide did not matter; they would go when they went, and a lot of the so-called romance was lost, except for the slowly dwindling lights of Yokohama.   
“I feel sad somehow,” Schuldig commented at the row of jewels in the blackened sky and sea. “Why do I feel sad?”  
“’Sayonara’ moment,” Yuuji answered from where he, too, leaned on the railing a few feet away with Aya on the other side. “For centuries, people left Japan this way. Not ‘ashita’ or ‘jyah’ but ‘sayonara’. ‘We part, perhaps not to come back’.”  
“Oh, stop being maudlin,” Brad scoffed in annoyance. “He’s probably just picking up some sentiment from the Japanese.” They’d taken on a cadre of Japanese engineers.   
Yuuji rolled his eyes and gave up. He almost, almost felt for a packet of cigarettes. Sometimes it was very difficult to remember that he was not a smoker. When he was in the uniform, or home, or at the ‘school’, he’d had no problem. Back in civvies, spending a whole day listening to Japanese in Japan, he was fighting off Kudoh Yohji again. Schuldig was right. Why did he feel sad?  
Schuldig hung on to the railing and braced his feet to lean back, stretching his arms and shoulders, then sighed aloud. “Well, here we are, on our way to Hawaii and parts known. And since Esset is running this little parody of a sea cruise, no all you can eat buffet.”   
Yuuji laughed. “But I’ll bet they have calisthenics and shuffle board first thing in the morning.”  
“They would, too,” Brad smiled. “I suppose in the 21st Century, all we can do is look back. There’s been nothing new since 1999. Just up-grades that de-grade, and improvements that don’t improve. Why not take the best of the past and ignore the last fifty years?”   
“Now who’s being maudlin?” Yuuji asked, pushing off the railing and reaching around to snag Aya in an arm. “Maybe there is an all you can eat buffet. You know, just for show for a week or so?”   
“Nope, cafeteria style service,” Brad said after a moment. “Consistency in everything.”   
“Damned German efficiency,” Yuuji chuckled.   
“Don’t be racist,” Schuldig reminded him. 

@ @ @ 

Yuuji felt like he’d been run over by a truck. He lay face down, clinging to the pillow. Yet again, he wondered if Aya wasn’t some karmactic punishment. A hand squeezed his left butt cheek, and he had no doubt there was going to be a bruise there in the morning.   
“Yuuji,” Aya cooed. “Aren’t you done resting yet?”  
“Yuuji doesn’t live here anymore,” Yuuji complained. “This is only his dried up husk.”  
The hand on his butt slapped it sharply. “Turn over,” Aya coaxed.  
“Dead,” Yuuji groaned.  
That hand insinuated fingers down between his legs and rummaged under his spent balls to winkle out his penis from under his pubic mound.   
“Ouch, stop that,” Yuuji said half heartedly.   
Aya stroked fingertips down the back of said penis. “Just one more time.”  
“Can’t. Dead.” He was pretty sure. Those fingers….  
Aya made an impatient noise. “Yuuuuuuji.”   
“Nympho,” Yuuji accused.  
Aya didn’t know the foreign word. “Turn over.”  
“Aya, are you trying to kill me?” Yuuji’s voice was half muffled by the pillow but came across as quiet concern.   
“Fuck me,” came the demand.  
Yuuji flopped over. “There. If you can get it up again, it’s all yours,” he said with no enthusiasm. “I’m going to sleep.”   
Flaccid was truly the word. Aya sighed dejectedly and laid down, snuggling beside him.   
Yuuji managed to put an arm around him. Sleep dragged at him like a tide. He drifted….  
“Do you really think there is a base under all that ice?” Aya asked, like it was broad daylight or something.   
“Not thinking. Sleeping.”  
Aya slung a leg over Yuuji’s thighs. “How can you sleep?” he demanded.   
“Easy. Close your eyes and count to a hundred backwards.” (And then if necessary, get choked into passing out, you fiend.)  
Aya sighed. “I don’t believe in UFOs, but after everything…”  
“S’not like it’s little green men, Aya. It’s just humans being humans. Sleep.” He moved his arm up across the back of Aya’s shoulders, the better to try and squeeze off the blood supply to that over sexed brain, if he could get up the energy.   
Fingers again. Picking up his worn out tired penis and dropping it. One, two, three. Flop, flop, flop. Another deep sigh.   
Maybe if he pretended to be dead, Aya would give up.   
“Yuuuuuuuji,” Aya whined.   
“What?” Yuuji was going to kill him. He did not know how, but he was going to kill him.   
“Mmph,” Aya responded.   
“What did you do for a hobby before you decided to molest me?” Yuuji asked, more awake now than he wanted to be.   
“Killed people. Masturbated,” Aya responded, snugging a bit closer, and kissed him on the collar bone. “Masturbated while thinking about killing you,” he snickered.  
Okaaay, disturbing. “Have you tried a sleeping pill?”   
“Sleeping pills ruin your libido,” Aya asserted.   
Yeah, that would be a good thing…”Aya, if you don’t go to sleep, I’m going to have to slug you in the jaw.”   
Aya laughed, and moved to kiss him on the mouth.   
Well, yeah…but no. He reached up to put a hand on Aya’s cheek, his thumb under that adorable chin and pushed his lips off gently. “Aya, it has been a very long week. I am tired. I need to detox from all the stress. I need sleep. Sleep is good. Sleep is wonderful. Look at me, Aya,” he lowered his voice a tone, looking into those blue-brown hazeled eyes that looked so purple from any distance. “Go to sleep.”   
Aya’s eyes rolled up into his head and he went limp.   
There. Sometimes it was good to be a talent, even if it was just a lame level three hypnosis assisted by body chemicals. He pushed the younger man off and turned on his side to finally get some sleep. It occurred to him he should have done that two orgasms ago. He sighed and passed out. 

TBC

 


	3. Chapter 3

After a week, nothing much had happened on the ship that could justify even the mildly annoyed attention of an elite ops team used to running on the adrenaline high of a dangerous hunt for an intelligent opponent and very high stakes.   
Brad decided he had lost his mind by day three. The endless tedium of sitting around being bored was one of the most insidious tortures any one, let along ‘Nazies’ could come up with. Breakfast, boredom, lunch, boredom, supper, boredom, sex, boredom, sleep, repeat, boredom. Vacation was so over.   
While Schuldig was in the shower, Brad made a run for it. He grabbed his gym clothes, sneakers, practice gloves, and headed for one of the ship’s gyms.   
It took him a while, given his reputation as a precog and a bloody cheat, but he found some willing (less informed) victims to get up a few rounds with. He tried to keep his talent to the fewest possible seconds, a practice in itself, and managed to let himself get brushed a few times in the head, as well as taking a few body strikes; nothing more than a few bruises with the padded gloves. His goal was to let his sparing partners last a while. After all, it was practice, not life or death.  
He knocked gloves with the guy he had been sparing with after a good twenty minute set, thanked him, and went to grab his water bottle off the stool and get out of the ring. He had one leg over the lower rope, was bent over holding the upper, when a woman in a tank top and shorts got in his way of stepping out and down. He looked at her curiously. She was lithe, muscular, perhaps a weight lifter. Her dark blond hair was tied back in a pony tail, and she had the Aryan looks, but brown eyes. Not unattractive, just not his preferred gender.   
“You’re Crawford,” she stated. “Care for a round?” It wasn’t really a question.  
“Sorry, I’m a little winded,” he said, and waited for her to get out of the way.   
“Pussy,” she said with a challenging smile, knocking her already gloved hands together.   
“No, thank you,” he said firmly. She could take that as she liked.   
“Anna, leave the poor man alone,” one of the other guys in the gym laughed. “Can’t you see he doesn’t want to hit a girl?”  
Oh, that was just…No, he had to keep his cool.   
“Are you afraid to hit a ‘girl’?” Anna asked, with a wolfish grin.   
“Your temper will get the best of you,” Brad said in a quietly conversational tone.   
She frowned at him. “Fight, Pussy,” she said coldly.   
He sighed. “You know, Meow,” he said and started to climb down from the ring anyway, forcing her to either get a foot somewhere or get out of the way.   
“You think you’re better than a woman who’s trained in the ring?” she demanded, stepping back just enough to let him set feet on the gym floor. She was as tall as he was.   
“Anna…” someone else started.   
“I think…you have something to prove, and I don’t,” Brad said, as much as he wanted to deck her.   
“One round,” she challenged.   
Brad considered. He didn’t need to look into the future to see that this was going to be a waste of time. He sighed and faked her out by almost stepping past her, then stepping up and swinging back up into the ring. He limbered up his thighs and calves, still warm from the previous bouts, and loosened his shoulders and neck to throw off the exhaustion, while she glared at him and got into the ring in a less athletic move. He realized she had been watching him with the others. She thought she had his moves down. That he was tired and this would be easy. He smiled tightly. She had to be about six or seven years younger than him, and in peak condition.   
“I’m not holding back just because you’re a woman,” he warned.  
“Shut up and fight, Pussy,” she challenged, feinting at him to see if he rattled.   
He didn’t move, his expression becoming cold and hard. He swung left, pulled it and threw a right.   
She barely escaped, grazed. Now there was hate in her eyes.   
He’d called it. She was headhunting, proving she was better than any man. Why, he didn’t care. She was going to lose this fight. And he was going to make another enemy. She probably thought she had the advantage; younger, fresh, after he had been sparring for more than an hour. She would try to use his weight against him, too, denser muscle and bones, less gracile. She had tried to get him mad enough to lose his temper, starting with the insulting name calling, attacking his ‘testosterone’.  
He put up his guard and closed the gap with a half running step, forcing her to take the advantage she thought she had. He ducked, keeping inside her range, getting in her face, forcing her back and to defend herself from punches that didn’t come, effectively bulldozing her with his guard.  
She got madder, and swung hard at his ribs.  
He blocked it with the back of his forearm, letting her own power bruise her through the padded glove. That would jar her wrist. He backed off, leading her now, taking swipes at her that only brushed air close enough for her to feel it on her face.   
“Fight, you bastard!” she hissed at him.   
/She’s not a talent,/ a voice said in his head, so familiar he did not even have to look around and get socked. /That is her problem./   
Schuldig had come looking for him. There was a feeling of annoyance there, but nothing more than usual. Schuldig was clingy and that was all there was to it.   
/Shush,/ Brad thought at him. And the more angry she got, the more he went easy on her, stepping back, taking feints, but with no intention of hitting.   
She blew it and dove in for a clench, he ducked to one side just in time to avoid her grab at him and she went stumbling, catching herself on the railing.  
Brad debated. Stop this now, or beat the crap out of her. His talent told him if the former, she would attempt to kill him in a hallway, knife him in the back and leave him to bleed. If he beat the crap out of her, she would simmer in her own hate for all things talent and go pick on someone else she thought she could beat.   
He grinned at her and waved her to come at him with his gloved hands. Now, the fight was on. 

@ @ @

“You’re not supposed to be fighting girls, you’re supposed to be fu….” Yuuji hesitated, a sudden cracking headache making him forget what he was going to say for the pain. He glared at Schuldig, who was calmly poking at his supper.   
Schuldig’s tiffany blue eyes met his, the telepath giving him a look that said, ‘say it and you’re dead’.   
Yuuji resolved to watch his mouth. The headache was lifted. “Well, anyway,” he finished lamely and wrapped a wodge of spaghetti around his fork.   
Aya poked Yuuji in the shoulder and asked in Japanese, “What are they singing?” he indicated a large group of guys near their age in one dining room corner who were singing merrily away when they weren’t laughing. They were obviously drunk off their asses and hoisting rather large steins about to the rhythm, slopping beer on the carpet.   
Yuuji listened a moment, then laughed. “Sea chanty. They’re being very graphically rude.”   
“Which is why we are in the bachelor’s dining room,” Brad commented. That, and he had been getting tired of women prowling about, looking at him with that gleam in their eyes. Making him feel hunted. He was grateful for the fact that Esset discouraged smoking as it did not give them a chance to ask him for a light, and he brutally ignored dropped things meant to get his attention and strike up a conversation.   
Schuldig lifted his head and listened to the singing for a moment. “How can they do that with a mermaid? Even if such creatures were real, that is impossible,” he shrugged and went back to his food.   
“I’m not at all sure that’s a step up from cabin boys.” Yuuji said.   
Aya elbowed him, a fork full of spaghetti dangling over his plate. “Tell me,” he insisted. “You’re supposed to be teaching me German.”  
Yuuji shook his head. “My mother raised me better than to repeat that.” (Plus, he didn’t want to give Aya any more ideas. He’d already confiscated and disposed of the Kama Sutra months ago.)   
Aya expressed his annoyance with a sneer and went back to eating his spaghetti and meatballs, which was actually quite good. One thing about Esset, they fed their people. And there was ice cream for dessert.  
Brad looked out over the dinning room, to the view outside the wall of windows. Ocean. Big deal. He preferred cityscapes. However, you had to give them credit, this was a very good way to move troops and equipment with out drawing fire.   
“You didn’t say,” Schuldig interrupted his daze. “Did you win this battle royal with the valkyrie?”  
“Of course I won, I’m alive, aren’t I?” Brad glanced at him with a smile. “Unfortunately, I may have exhausted all the sparing partners I could find. Word will get around.” He didn’t feel like mentioning he had broken her jaw. Well, she asked for it.   
“Oh, I don’t know,” Yuuji said, giving him one of their old private looks. “You might have started something you might regret. All the girls will be out to spar with you.”  
“Oh, stop,” Brad warned, giving it back.   
Yuuji smiled slyly. “Well, if you get really bored, you can play Canasta with my mother and her cronies. They keep trying to drag me into it.”   
“Are you out of your mind?” Brad asked yet again. “The last thing I want to do is get anywhere near that baby crazy mother of yours. She’d Taser me and I’d wake up hooked to an automatic milking machine or something equally horrific.”  
“Will you not talk about my mother that way?” Yuuji winced. “She’s only doing her job. You’re supposed to obey the rules, you know. Hand over the DNA and you can bugger anyone you want. How the hell did you convince Traugott to put the whammy on everything, anyway?”  
Brad pointedly kept his mouth shut. How rumors got out. If Yuuji knew it, he’d heard it from his mother, which meant everyone in the council knew it, which explained why he was walking around with a virtual “seduce me” sign on his back. They weren’t just out to seduce him, they were after his ‘precious bodily fluids’. The Lebensborn mob.   
“Thank gott we’ll be in Hawaii tomorrow,” Schuldig crunched on a piece of garlic toast. “I can’t take much more of this excitement.”

@ @ @

Aya and Yuuji were walking up the hallway to their cabin when Brad’s door opened and a female dressed in little more than a skimpy beach robe held over her front was flung out by an irate Schuldig. “Out, you gott forsaken slut! What the hell were you thinking! Get out and don’t come back!” he slammed the cabin door, then opened it again to throw her high heels after her. “And take your gott damn fuck-me pumps with you!” He slammed the door again.  
Aya and Yuuji stared at her for a moment. She glared at the shut door, bent at the knees to scoop up her shoes, then turned to blush and glare at them. While she was youthful and attractive, and, Yuuji noted, rather buxom, she was definitely not on the right track there. But her glare was about a level four compared to Aya’s death rays. Lesser men might have fallen back, but Yuuji, not so much.   
A ‘shinck’ noise alerted Yuuji like the sound of a can opener to a cat, and he went into control the potential bloody mess mode yet again. “Aya,” he warned, putting out an arm to block the swordsman, then looking at the woman again. “Fraulein,” he said pleasantly in German. “Perhaps you mistook the deck level?”  
She broke off combat mode and with a huff and head held high, marched past them to the elevator, got in, turned and pressed the button, having treated them to the view of her naked backsides.   
“What makes Crawford so special anyway?” Aya said sourly, letting his sword drop back into its sheath.  
Yuuji had tried to convince him to leave it in the cabin, but Aya had gone into full samurai mode since there was no law against it and most of Esset carried weapons one way or the other. Even little kids were running around the ship with little five inch long daggers on a belt holster.   
“Well, it’s a long story,” Yuuji said, hoping that would be that.  
“Which I’m sure you know,” Aya accused as they reached their cabin, and Yuuji ran the keycard through the reader.   
Yuuji sighed as they walked in, and shut the door behind Aya, making sure it was locked. “Okay, you know how women like rich bastards?”  
Aya scowled, crossing his arms. Ah, see; there was that glare. The one that made all others seem like a dying flashlight. Why he deserved it this time, Yuuji had no idea.   
“Powerful talents are like rich bastards. Think of the bad old days, when the Emperor had all those women after him so they could be Empress, and their fathers were all shoving their daughters at him so they could be the next Emperor’s grandfather.”  
“You’re saying he is an Emperor,” Aya stated sullenly. He still did not like Crawford one little bit.   
“He’s—Aya, I really can’t have this conversation with you; it’s not only classified, it’s none of your business.” Yuuji stated. “I can tell you, Esset keeps an eye on talent. They have always bred for the better results. Look around you; you’re surrounded by people who could pass as fashion models. Back in the 1930s, if you didn’t meet the physical requirements, you didn’t get into the SS in the first place. A substandard woman couldn’t even marry an SS man. Little kids in school were taught to chose people who were a social asset; good looks and brains. ‘Be aware of your blood lines, think of the next generation’ was what sex ed was all about in those days, and still is. Talent is an extra added factor. Even you’re a hot property in the baby market. Lucky for you, you’re a bit scary weird to European girls,” he added ruefully.   
Aya blinked. Then he remembered that ‘physical’. He blushed, then went pale. “I um—your mother…?”  
“Yeah,” Yuuji asserted. “What did you think she was going to do with it? Somewhere out there probably right now is some volunteer mum to be hatching your eggs, so to speak—I think I’m going to throw up,” he covered his mouth tightly for a moment, thinking happy thoughts, happy thoughts as he went to the balcony and opened the door. He stood there breathing in the fresh sea air deeply.   
Aya frowned. “Your mother is evil!” he stated and went to take a very long, very soapy shower. 

@ @ @

Nagi looked in the mirror of the Honolulu hotel room that had been rented for the occasion. Formal Japanese Hakama outfit. Raw silk, crisply ironed, razor sharp pleats, fluffy white tassel on the black jacket; everything was very, very formal, except that he wore his toe-socks in dress shoes under the hem of the voluminous hakama pants, rather than geta. His hair was slicked back to shine like lacquer and perfectly shaped enough to make a Yakuza proud. Since he had no family, the mon embroidered with white silk thread in five places on his jacket was the stylized twelve-rayed Nordic sun sign most people called the ‘black sun’. A shoto and katana hung at his waist.   
Yuuji’s father looked him over approvingly. “When you walk, move calmly enough to keep your feet from showing. When you kneel, push the hakama against your shins as you bend so you don’t end up with your calf or something showing. When you stand, keep your feet apart, in line with your shoulders. Don’t bang the katana on door frames or the floor. Only touch the handle when you are moving it to kneel or sit down. And don’t slouch!”  
Nagi had not been slouching, but he straightened up anyway.   
“It’s hopeless,” Sarazawa senior stated.   
Nagi looked at him. He saw a gleam of humor in the older man’s eyes, set in that samurai-stern face. He thought Yuuji’s father had a much more sophisticated sense of humor than Yuuji had, and relaxed just a little.   
“Is-shi-da-san,” Chieko said firmly, “Leave the poor boy alone, he’s nervous enough. Never mind him, Nagi-kun,” she told him and fussed with the sleeves of the jacket, brushing them down. “You look fine. Totto-chan is a very lucky girl to have such a nice young man as you,” she shot her husband a scathing look, as if there was something to be said for him. Despite the fact that she’d married him.   
Her husband rolled his eyes and got out of the hotel room.   
Chieko giggled and Nagi eyed her warily. This was where Yuuji came from. “Now sit down, so you don’t crumple anything and wait patiently. Everything is going to go off with out a hitch, so don’t worry.” She left him alone in the room, closing the door behind her with a wink at him.   
Everything was going to go horrible, he just knew it. 

@ @ @

Chieko drew the traditional hood up over Tot’s head carefully, and shaped the stiff cuff to sit correctly across her forehead. The panda buns and pony tails sort of made up for the lack of the traditional hairstyle’s support of the headdress. It would stay in place with the two red cherry hat pins. The bright red safflower petal lipstick made her pale skin look like she had painted it geisha white. The rest of the outfit was just perfect; white silk jacquard patterned with chrysanthemums and other flowers, a line of red at the neck band to imitate more layers than were there, white obi with lush gold silk embroidery. She took the girl by the shoulders. “Are you ready for this, Totto-chan?” she asked, a little moisture in her eyes making them shine.   
“Unn,” Tot nodded once, blinking big, blue contact covered eyes.   
“You and Nagi-kun have waited a long time, like good children,” Cheiko said. “Are you sure you are ready?”   
Something flickered in Tot’s expression, fleeting and faint, but she smiled a moment later. “Yes,” she asserted sincerely. Then she picked up Rabbi-chan from a chair, the stuffed bunny in it’s little tuxedo suit and handed the toy to her. “Will you baby sit Rabbi-chan?” she asked shyly. “For the—honeymoon?”  
“Of course, I will. Totto-chan, that boy loves you more than anything,” Chieko was having a hard time of this. “Don’t lock yourself in the bathroom and sit up all night playing video games, you hear me?”  
Tot smiled wryly and blushed. 

@ @ @

Brad looked at Nagi and snorted. “You look like an escapee from a taigadorama.”  
Nagi glared at him.   
“That hair,” Schuldig snickered behind his hand.   
“If you two are going to ruin this, I’ll kill you both,” Nagi threatened.   
Brad looked up at the ceiling in a silent sigh, then back down at Nagi. “Let’s get this over with,” he motioned to the door.   
Nagi went out it, keeping an eye on Brad until he couldn’t and still walk forward. The elevator ride was suspiciously silent, which sort of really didn’t help.   
As they stepped out into the warm Honolulu sunshine, Nagi balked. “What the hell is this?” he squawked.   
There in all its snorting, hoof clopping, very large animal glory stood a chestnut color horse, its saddle caparisoned in traditional Japanese style, tassels and all. A man in a tuxedo and lei waited with the reigns in white gloved hands, grinning at him.   
“It’s a ‘horse’,” Schuldig said, leaning at him a little, as if speaking to the stupidest person in the world.   
“I know it’s a horse, you moron! What the hell?” Nagi rounded on him.   
“It’s tradition,” Brad said. “You ride the horse, we walk beside you. And that animal had better not do anything,” he warned, eyeing the back end warily.   
“I don’t want a horse at my wedding!” Nagi protested.   
“Get on the damned horse,” Brad said, meaning it.   
Nagi looked at the horse, then at Brad, who gave him the do it or die look as he, too, tugged on a pair of white gloves.   
Nagi got on the damned horse. It shifted alarmingly, and he automatically held it still. It squealed with confusion and growing fear.  
“Let go of it,” Brad stated between his teeth. “That thing is costing a fortune. And don’t get me started on the ‘parade license’.”   
Nagi let the horse breath again and forced himself to settle down, too. “You bastards,” he said very quietly. Everyone in the vicinity was staring at him. A few even clapped appreciatively as he nudged the beast forward, remembering the lessons he had been forced to take.   
“You think this is bad, you wait and see the palanquin the bride is delivered in,” Schuldig said. “They charge by the pound.”   
Somehow, they all made it through alive. Even Nagi.

TBC

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

“Why don’t we get married?” Schuldig asked, trying to deal with eating his roast pork with his fingers. The whole luau on the beach thing was all very nice, but sticky.  
“Thus proving once again you are out of your gay little mind,” Brad said dryly. He knew who was guilty of this excessive mess, and she was grinning at his discomfort like a monkey when she wasn’t nagging her husband to have a good time. Chieko Sarazawa was a menace.  
“I am not gay, I am bisexual,” Schuldig stated. “Why can’t we get married?”  
Brad looked at him. “Lay off the beer.”  
Schuldig widened his eyes at him a bit to bring him back to the point of the conversation.  
“You’re just feeling sorry for yourself because you’re not the center of attention,” Brad accused, knowing him too well.  
Nagi and Tot were in ‘normal’ clothes now, dancing frantically to the retro style surf music the band was playing. Nagi had an idiotic look on his face to match Tot’s constant grin. Other people from the boat who had wanted to come had been on the open invitation and the party was a success, even if the beach was a bit crowded.  
Still, they could have put out tables and chairs along with the portable dance floor, Brad thought for the fifth time. Sitting on blankets in the sand was just a little too Annette Funicello for his liking.  
“If we were married, the girls would leave you alone,” Schuldig asserted. “They would say, ah, too bad, all the good ones are always gay or married, and you will be both.”  
“What makes you think I’m a ‘good one’?” Brad had to tease.  
Schuldig looked at him as if he were insane, and had more beer.  
“Why don’t we get married,” Aya hit Yuuji with after over hearing this.  
Yuuji stifled the immediate urge to yell ‘hell no!’ and covered it up by stuffing more saffron rice into his mouth. “Because it’s against rules,” he came up with after he had chewed and swallowed his food. Thank the gods. “Esset doesn’t allow non productive, aka Gay, marriage. Himmler wrote a very neatly thought out and rational speech about it. Basically, it’s all very well and nice to have comradery, but boys, go home and make babies. ‘Or we’ll kill you’ is just implied.”  
“Himmler is dead,” Aya stated. “Who cares what he thinks?”  
“Slightly higher than Hitler in Esset’s eyes,” Yuuji warned, leaning over to look into his eyes. “Besides, I’ve seen enough of you in an apron with a broom, okay? I’d rather you stayed my illicit sex toy, it’s—sexier,” he purred.  
Aya forgot all about the wedding thing.  
“You’re terrible,” Brad said quietly on Yuuji’s other side, just before Aya, who had scrambled to his feet, dragged Yuuji off into the bushes.

@ @ @

Schuldig found himself in the middle of an inferno. He looked around, confused. The fire crackled and the air was close. Roof top. He looked around, wondering what the hell?  
Brad sat on the roof surface his back to the parapet. His hair was white, a trickle of red was running down the side of his head. Schuldig had always told him he would burst something the way that thing throbbed when he got mad. But this was—“Vas ist?” he said aloud, after finding out their link was down. Not blocked, down.  
“I told you not to read my mind,” Brad snapped at him.  
“I’m sorry, I was….” A dream. This was a dream.  
He forced himself awake and turned on the little reading light on the headboard. Too much beer, too much food, and the rocking of the ship had put him so deeply asleep, he was groggy as hell. He pushed himself up and looked down at Brad’s sleeping face. The man was troubled and it showed. Brad’s dream. He had dreamed he was dying? Why had his hair been white?  
“Mein Mann,” Schuldig gave his shoulder a little shake, gently at first, then a little harder. “Brad, wake up.”  
Brad grunted and opened his eyes, wide, startled in alarm. “Oh, shit,” he grumbled and went limp again. “Damn, that was too real.” He rubbed an eye. “What time is it anyway?”  
“Why was your hair white in that dream?” Schuldig asked.  
“I have no idea,” Brad responded. “Just some random misplaced premonition,” he yawned and pulled Schuldig closer. “Go back to sleep.”  
“With my heart pounding like this and the smell of fire and burning building still in my nostrils?” Schuldig complained. “Stop having crazy dreams.”  
Brad, eyes closed, smiled. “That will be the day.” He stroked the red head’s head. “Get some sleep, we’re going to climb that volcano tomorrow, remember?”  
“Why was your hair white?” Schuldig persisted.  
Brad sighed deeply. “Those dreams are from other times, Schuldig. Nothing to do with reality. Just misplaced premonitions. It’s why I take the damned pills. And I haven’t been taking them.”  
“Why don’t you take them?” He knew damned well if he did not take his, he would get too crazy to function.  
“Because I’m sick of them,” Brad said, reaching up to turn out the reading lamp. “I’m sick of being so weak I need pills to keep me stable. Don’t you ever get sick of yours?”  
“Yes, but then the results are not so good. Remember you tend to slap the shit out of me when I don’t take them,” Schuldig grumbled.  
“I think of it as love taps,” Brad chuckled softly. “Besides you only stopped taking them to get back at me. So fair is fair.” He gave him a one armed hug.  
“Hmm, and I can’t even remember why I stopped taking them, so you have the advantage of lying to me and telling me anything you want,” Schuldig was over thinking this again. He sighed deeply. “Why would we be on a burning roof top anyway? And why would your hair be white?”  
“Sleep, Schuldig,” Brad ordered half heartedly.  
“No, tell me,” Schuldig insisted. “You’re the one that woke me up at”—he looked at the clock—“freaking four am. I demand justification.”  
“And now I’m wide awake,” Brad complained. He was silent for a few minutes.  
“Brad,” Schuldig gave him a little shove in the chest.  
“I’m thinking, telepath, did you not notice that?” Brad growled. “The only thing I can come up with is that you mentioned not going back to Esset and it’s been weighing on me. If we hadn’t gone back, that ‘dream’ would have been reality. Now go back to sleep.”  
Schuldig frowned in the dark. The room was very dark, as there as no moon and no ambient light from the shore out here. He shifted onto his back, thinking. “Tomorrow morning, take your pills, okay?”  
“Okay,” Brad said flatly, already mostly asleep. 

@ @ @

“Have you talked to him?” Chieko asked her son. She sat down on the lounge beside him, holding her sun hat on against the breeze. It fluttered the beach cover up she wore over an ‘age appropriate’ one piece bathing suit. She looked very Vogue 1950s with her short hair cut and colorful outfit in stripes of sunset orange, red and yellow.  
“Yes, Mother,” he drawled under a straw cowboy hat.  
He was laying there in a not too brief pair of bathing shorts, and sunglasses, working on a tan that would only turn his skin more golden. White scars showed here and there that his mother frowned at. She remembered him when he had been a teen, all velvety perfection. She hated it when her babies ended up flawed by life. But what could you do when they were all trained to be soldiers in this on going war called life?  
“It’s not working,” she reached over to run a finger down a nasty line on his arm. “What happened here?”  
“Angry ex-girlfriend,” he said.  
She frowned at him. “I’m your mother.”  
“Well, I was brainwashed into believing it,” he said. “Long story.”  
“Yuu-chan, just convince him to stop having everything killed,” she coaxed.  
“It’s rather hard to do in public. And if I try to talk to him alone, Aya gets jealous. And you know Schuldig will have something to say.”  
“Hmmm, Schuldig,” she said thoughtfully.  
“I wouldn’t. He tends to think of Brad as being his personal property, even though it’s the other way around.”  
“Oh, this really is too much!” she insisted. “What is it with these people? Talk to him again.”  
“Mother,” Yuuji said calmly, “why don’t you talk to him yourself?”  
She pouted. “He’ll just look cute and lie, like he always did when he was in trouble.”  
“Or, shoot you, but I seriously doubt he’d aim to kill,” Yuuji affirmed. “He knows how fond I am of you. He’s a little bit sentimental that way, you know.”  
She set her jaw. “Be that way,” she slapped her knees and stood up. “I’m going to do just that, go get myself shot at. And then you’ll be sorry.”

@ @ @

Brad was shooting pool in one of the rec rooms. He swore on his honor not to cheat and the fellows he was playing with were not putting down money, so it was all fair. He kept his talent muffled as much as he could and entertained himself by seeing how often he could precisely miss a shot, have it just come that close to falling in but hanging on the edge.  
“You can’t come in here, this lounge is for men only!” Someone protested in German. “Women are not allowed!”  
“I’m not a woman, I’m a doctor,” Brad heard Sarazawa Chieko state. “And I know how to remove things. With surgical precision.”  
He turned to see the guy blanch. “I think that’s my problem,” he said, handing his cue to one of his playing partners and went over to see what was going on.  
Chieko stood, set jawed, looking at the man who had tried to enforce the rules. Esset was very clear about giving the sexes a break from each other, but no one dared use the terms “safe spaces”. It didn’t help to enforce her claim that she was wearing a rather fetching little beach outfit. Her son had obviously got his legs from his mother.  
Brad walked a little fast, while maintaining a certain amount of dignity. “Doctor Sarazawa, is there anything I can help with?” he took her arm gently and gave her a little push toward the exit. He knew she was there for him, it couldn’t be helped, but she held her ground just long enough to glare some more at Mr. Rules.  
“We can’t have women in here,” the man said to Brad, obviously a little too disturbed about this breach.  
“It’s alright,” Brad told him, not saying what he was tempted to say. “We’re just leaving.”  
Chieko let him turn her now and marched out. She rounded on him in the hall way when the door was shut. “I want a word with you, Brad Crawford. Quite a few in fact. Lots and lots of words.”  
He blinked. “What—did I do?”  
“It’s what you didn’t do. Or maybe you did do. Don’t confuse the issue!” she ordered sternly. “You know what you did!”  
Of course he did. But why was it such a big issue? Outside of her obsession with eugenics. “Well?” he crossed his arms, looking down at her.  
She shook her finger at him. “You got that weasely ersatz Valkyrie of yours to destroy every last sample of your DNA and anyone related to you! How could you! It’s—monstrous! That DNA is irreplaceable, you have no idea of how hard it was to obtain in the first place, or how fortunate we were to even locate a source. The sample was so dead, only the DNA could be extracted! If I weren’t so invested in seeing your blood line survive—I’d kill you!”  
People going by were edging along the walls, looking askance at them.  
Anyone who knew Brad well would know there was a very dark storm cloud forming in his ‘aura’. “I understand that I’m the only precog of my level to survive my childhood, possibly because of the ‘childhood’ I was subjected to, but that’s not my problem. I didn’t ask for any of this.”  
“So you’re going to be stubborn, like the others. The ones that Esset abandoned from the start because He disowned them.”  
Brad’s expression grew darker. “I will not stand here in public and discus this, Sarazawa-sensei,” he switched to Japanese. “I only just learned the truth months ago, now you’re throwing the whole thing in my face as if it were my duty? I thought we were through with the dictatorship of the Elders.”  
She scowled, her mouth a thin line. “All I am trying to get you to understand is that the gift you were given is very precious and you mustn’t squander it.”  
“I didn’t ask for it!” he raised his voice a little. The hallway was clear now.  
“Fool!” she hissed. “No child asks to be born! But every child has a duty to its elders and the society it is born into and nurtured by. To thrive and be a blessing to that society, and to leave a legacy that does not shame its progenitors. You’ve been very lucky to be forgiven your sexual aberration, but you need to fork over that viable DNA! It’s not as though you would be any sort of a father to any child born,” she said the last bitterly.  
“I wonder,” Brad said, feeling that strange ache rising again. “If anyone ever considered the reason I turned out the way I did? You’re asking an antisocial psychopath to give a shit about the future generations of an organization that practically killed me at birth and then proceeded to make my life a living hell? You know better; you know the only thing that kept me sane when they brought me back was—,” he fell silent, the amount of emotion involved in this sudden exposé raising a warning wall in his mental processes.  
“So you’ll deny the brotherhood your amazing gift? Even though all along, there were those who fought for you?” she said quietly. “You saw the file. Not the little thin one of your ‘official record', but the real one. The people who took their lives in their hands for you and stood up to the Elders?” She reached out to put her fingertips on his chest, gathering herself up a little, moisture in her eyes, not meeting his, then forcing herself to. “You saw the file, but you don’t know the truth.”  
His jaw set hard. “Fuck the truth,” he stated. “The answer is no.”  
She gathered a handful of his shirt in her hand. “Why? Because you hate us? You hate all of us? Then why did you come back?”  
His grin was a skeleton’s baring of teeth. “Revenge,” he said. “I came back for revenge. You created me, Sensei, now you’re stuck with me,” he hissed this last statement.  
She reached up and he thought she was going to slap him, but the premonition passed as she laid her hand on his cheek very gently instead. She had wanted to slap him, but the look on her face was something else. “You were our revenge, dear. You freed us all.”  
He didn’t want this. He didn’t want any of this. He hated looking back. There was only forward.  
Her hand fell away. “Honestly, I think we will survive with out you now. We know better, we’ve learned from our mistakes and our fears. We’ve learned how to root out the evil such power draws to it and gut it. There is no question, Esset holds the future. But it would be nice, if you would—just toe the party line. Maybe as you grow older, you’ll reconsider. But I would like to see it in my lifetime.” She moved to turn away.  
Sorrow smashed into him. She’d given him her son. And in a way, she’d become his foster mother, too; but he hadn’t had the sense to realize it then. All those times he was so bedazzled by Yuuji, she’d often been there. A laugh, a smile, a good meal, a welcome into their home, cookies for a picnic, sitting in the front row at his graduation. The contrast between this good woman and the psycho bitch that had adopted him as an infant was unbelievable.  
“Sensei,” he said when she was a few steps away. She stopped, waiting for him to speak.  
He hesitated, then came out with it. “Isn’t it enough that I brought him back?” he said little louder than a whisper.  
“I think I cried more when he came back than I did when he supposedly died,” she said, something roughening her throat. She turned back to look at him again. “For god sakes, be a human being, Brad.” 

@ @ @

“Yeeeessss,” her voice was so damned smug on the phone.  
He scowled. He was the precog here, but how much did that creature know. He was almost tempted to tell her he was just calling to say Nagi had left something behind. “Frau Traugott, how are things?”  
“Get to the point, Herr Crawford,” she taunted. “We both know this isn’t a social call.”  
He sighed. “You win. Undo our contract.”  
She laughed lightly. “Who finally got to you?”  
He frowned. “None of your business. Just undo it.”  
“I can. For a price.”  
He didn’t like the sound of that at all. “That being?”  
“There will be a little box from Shinjuku, waiting for you in Punto Arenas, when the ship arrives,” she said. “Just like the one in our original arrangement. You’ll get Fujimiya to perform the ceremony.”  
“What?” he said, not quite understanding this, or maybe not wanting to.  
“You’ll know when.” She hung up on him.  
He looked at the satellite phone, then set it down. Damn. Damn women and all their scheming bullshit. Damn alien women and all their scheming bullshit.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

“It was either that or get nagged to death,” (by an expert who could put you to shame) Brad did not add aloud.   
“Well, maybe I don’t agree,” Schuldig said sullenly. It was mid-afternoon, and they were in their cabin the ship, getting ready yet again to go ashore. Some how it all seemed so exhausting. The day was beautiful and what temperate heat there was had begun to wain as the breeze shifted. A perfect day for another damned tour on the islands.  
Brad stopped halfway through knotting his tie and turned to look at him. “What?” he said in disbelief.   
“I said maybe I don’t agree to this,” the annoying red head stated. “I should have some say in this, you know. After all, by rights, that decision is partly mine, too. And just because I don’t have ovaries, I’m being cut out of this loop?”  
Oh gods…”Schuldig, don’t start with the crazy.” Brad warned, untying his tie to start over again.   
“Oh, so it’s crazy to not want some other woman popping out your babies,” Schuldig escalated.   
Other? “Well, there was a rather suspicious line waiting outside the medical bay when I left,” he opened the jar of gel and made his usual half hearted attempt at getting his hair to stay put. He certainly wasn’t going to slick it down with the heavy duty goop, it made his scalp crawl. But that stupid cowlick always sent everything tumbling down into his eyes when he was too active.   
“That isn’t funny!” Schuldig was outraged.  
Actually, it had been. It was creepy and disgusting and probably just his imagination, but he had absolutely ignored curiosity and refused to look into the future of the moment. For all he knew it was just a line for anti-sea sickness pills or sunburn or the volunteers for something more to do than just sit around and chat, play cards or knit, or what ever women did when they weren’t seducing corporate executives to steal trade secrets or sleeping their way to the top.   
Brad turned to look at him across the bed. “Stop being silly, finish getting dressed and we will go tour the palace, and have a nice, sane lunch. Frankly I don’t want to even think about it anymore.”  
Schuldig looked sullen. “I just don’t like the idea that twenty five or thirty years from now, I’ll turn a corner and see ‘you’ and feel all creepy old man sexy about it.”  
“Well, you’ll just have to deal with that when the time comes.”   
“And what if you die?” Schuldig fired his last shot. “And…” he fell silent.   
Brad smiled a little. “Don’t worry, I’ll take you with me.”   
“That’s not exactly comforting, you know,” Schuldig grumbled. “In a way yes, but no, not really.” 

@ @ @ 

“Oh, this is too much,” Schuldig said, seeing the lines of children in front of them already. “Why are we even doing this?” They were queued up for the tour though the Iolani Palace.   
“I thought Curiosity was your middle name,” Brad said ironically. “Aren’t you interested in a piece of history? We’re under cover, remember? Tourists.”   
Schuldig looked at the line snaking around the corner and the clusters of Esset people waiting in the garden/park area. “Invasion, more like.”  
“Indoctrination,” Yuuji commented behind him. “That’s not a local docent, that’s one of ours.”  
A woman was lecturing a batch of the elementary school aged children who had come along on the cruise with their parents. She was explaining how the Hawaiian Royal family had the rug swiped out from under them by the American government of the time in its quest for empire. Typical Esset kids, they stood still in loose rank and paid attention. They’d be screaming and yelling and playing pirates through the halls and over the decks of the ship again later. Rumor had it the mime had been keel hauled already.   
Aya was keeping a wary eye on the kids. Specifically for any suspiciously familiar features, or a tendency to golden toned hair on an Asian featured head. And then he had a thought, which lead to another thought, which gave him a sort of cross between suspicious and puzzled look.   
Schuldig turned to look at him past Yuuji. “Eww,” he made the ‘eww’ face at him, too.   
Aya turned pink and tried to clear his mind. He must have shocked himself so much, the telepath had been unable to ignore it. He wished he could find a way to shut the German misery out.   
Yuuji turned give him an arched eyebrow look. “What are you up to?”  
Aya looked sullen. “Why do you always assume I’m the one starting something?”  
“You’re standing behind me, and I’ve seen that look on your face all too often,” Yuuji grinned at him.   
Okay so he had been, at one point, looking at Yuuji’s butt, which was very nice to look at. “Jack ass,” he defended himself.   
Yuuji put two and two together. “I see. /Schuldig, spill it or I’ll…./  
Schuldig turned again to look at Yuuji. “I’m not a gossip monger,” he stated primly.   
“Bullshit, you blurt out things all the time.”   
“No, no, I am getting better at holding my tongue.”  
“Really, I thought you did a pretty good job of doing anything with your tongue; you just like to blurt embarrassing things out,” Yuuji taunted.   
“Stop it,” Aya gave him a fussy little shove. “It’s not right to be asking a damned telepath what I was thinking! And you, stay out of my mind!” he accused Schuldig.  
“I wasn’t in your mind,” Schuldig said, “Stop thinking so loud. Honestly, that was—just—Ewww!”   
Yuuji looked at Aya, a little warily. “Okay, now I’m not happy. Out with it. ”   
Aya blushed more.   
Crawford turned to look at them sternly. “Unfortunately, Nagi is not here for me to order him to lock up all your jaws. What the hell is this impending brawl about?”  
“He started it,” Schuldig pointed at Aya.   
Aya raised a fist, set jawed with aggression. (Thank goodness, Yuuji thought, he had taken the katana away from him that morning.)  
“I said ‘impending’, does no one listen to the precog?” Brad asked coolly. /What the hell are you up to?/  
/Don’t blame me for this!/ Schuldig protested.   
/You opened your big mouth,/  
Schuldig glared at him. /Big enough for your…./  
“Don’t even think it right now,” Brad held a finger up in front of Schuldig’s face. “You made this mess, you fix it. Discreetly.” He ordered.   
“Then You tell Him,” Schuldig ordered Aya, pointing at Yuuji. “And leave me out of this, I am just an innocent bystander.”  
“Bull. Shit.” Aya stated in some of the few English words he knew.   
Yuuji caught Aya by the shoulder and pulled him back a little. “Aya,” he said firmly. “Tell me what started this. It’s probably absolutely nothing and this lunatic is making it seem worse than it is because he’s bored standing around.”  
“You know, he acts more like you every day,” Schuldig told Brad. “Bossy, bossy, bossy. Micromanage the telepath.”  
“I am your boss,” Brad reminded.   
Aya sulked, then moved to whisper in Yuuji’s ear.   
Yuuji laughed curtly. “I just—nope—no part of it. Not happening.”   
“There,” Schuldig told Brad. “Problem solved. And there is a big gap in the line in front of you, so move along, people are staring,” he acted like Brad was the cause of everything now.   
Brad rolled his eyes. “Just let me stay sane through this whole trip,” he muttered.

@ @ @ 

“I’m pretty sure my sister would,” Aya said later in the privacy (he hoped) of their cabin.   
“Nope,” Yuuji said. “Your sister is not having my baby.”  
“Well, she might donate some eggs….”  
Yuuji turned to look at him. “Aya, think about what you are saying. You’re—an idiot. How the hell would you even begin to raise a child?”  
“Well, there are nannies and daycares…and where the hell are you going to be?”   
“My god, do you hear yourself?” Yuuji asked.   
“Why do you always call me names!” Aya protested.  
“Aya, you’re twenty and uneducated past what, middle school? You lose your temper and slaughter people,” Yuuji told him seriously. “I don’t think I could trust a child around you. You tried to kill Omi.”  
“I’m not a homicidal maniac, you just make it look that way.” Aya said sullenly, crossing his arms. “Besides, you blew Omi’s grandfather and his whole family up. And Omi wasn’t a child, he was a teenaged trained assassin and a Takatori.”  
“I’m beginning to think they are right about Hawaii, it makes people think all sorts of crazy romantic shit,” Yuuji said. “Look at me, Aya. You dumped your sister in Shinjuku and stole her name…”   
“No, you gave me her name,” Aya stated.   
“Okay, so you never corrected me, and now that you know she’s alive and you don’t have to be all retro-Japanese and ‘live for her’, why haven’t you gone back to ‘Ran’?”   
Aya bit his lip, then took Yuuji by the open front of his purple hibiscus and green palm leaves printed Hawaiian shirt with a little tug. “Maybe you should listen to yourself when you say my name,” he said in a ‘fight’s over, let’s have sex’ voice.   
“Your sister’s name,” Yuuji corrected, not having any of it.   
“What has any of this got to do with my sister’s name?” Aya demanded.   
Yuuji caught him by the shoulders again. “Listen to me, and I’m not using my talent on you, either, you just use your brain. My mother has brain washed you somehow and you are totally delusional.”   
Aya looked into those oh-so-sincere hazel green eyes. “It was just an idea. But you’re protesting an awful lot about it,” he frowned.   
“I think this ‘vacation’ is going to be the death of all of us,” Yuuji sighed, letting him go. “I’m not discussing this any more.”  
“And I’m not an idiot,” Aya said sullenly.   
Yuuji tilted his head. “I never said being an idiot was bad, I just think you probably should have at least tried to get some more education some where along the way.”  
“Why?” Aya demanded, so mad he couldn’t parse the continuing insult, his voice getting louder and louder. “It’s not like I’m going to be a rocket scientist. What’s the difference between me using a sword and you mixing up a few chemicals and things going boom, or cutting someone’s head off with that damned wire? I got by okay until you and your ex-boyfriend had to go and make things all confusing! And I had to give up my Porsche!”  
“What exactly are we fighting over?” Yuuji countered quietly.   
“You’re right, we could be having sex,” Aya pulled off his t-shirt.   
Yuuji sighed and tossed his hands up in surrender. “Of course.”  
“Oh, so now you’re going to tell me there’s something wrong with having sex,” Aya sat down on the bed to untie his high tops.   
Yuuji suddenly wanted a bottle of whisky and a pack of cigarettes very badly, which was very, very wrong. He rubbed the back of his neck, the stress tension creeping up his spine into his brain. “Hell no, not a damned thing,” he took his own shirt off.   
He remembered finding Aya sound asleep in his bed, and the strange sensation of thinking how sexy he was when ‘Kudoh Yohji’ was most definitely not gay. Aya with the strange if pretty color hair and wry little smile when he wasn’t trying to kill people with those gorgeous eyes. Aya who was prettier than any girl he had ever met while under the thrall of that brainwashing. Aya with his gawky leanness and calloused hands, his shy violence, and when he laughed in that oddly deep voice for such a skinny guy.   
When Aya stood up to skin off his black jeans, Yuuji caught him and pulled him close. “Hey, Aya, why don’t I suck what’s left of your brains out of your dick?” he offered.   
Aya felt a wave of lust wash over him so bad he felt like he was going to black out. Okay, so he was an idiot. 

@ @ @

“We have got to get off this ship,” Yuuji commented quietly to Brad from the chaise lounge next to his on the deck. Aya slept in the one on his other side. The gentle motion of the ship was quiet enervating if you weren’t actively fighting it.   
Unlike Yuuji, Brad was not in bathing shorts. He was covered from neck to toe in a white shirt and pale grey wool flannel slacks. He had put a white handkerchief over his face to keep the sun off, and tucked his hands in the pockets of his slacks. His only nod to dishabille comfort was having kicked his loafers off, exposing a pair of immaculate white socks. The sun was pleasantly warm, but he didn’t want to get brown. He didn’t tan gold like Yuuji, just--brown. “Make a swim for it?” Brad had recognized the old game immediately. Schuldig was getting his hair trimmed, so he could flirt with out reprisal, just a little.  
“Steal two paddle boards and some shark repellant.”  
“Scuba gear and extra tanks,” Brad came up with.   
“How would we get all that out with out being suspicious?”  
“Torpedo tube.”  
“We’d break our necks.”  
“Better idea. Rig one of the trampolines as a catapult.” Brad chuckled.  
“Too obvious,” Yuuji shot that idea down. “Dress up as mimes and pretend to be stuck in an invisible box until the kids throw us over board?”  
“I’m too tired to come up with anything more absurd than that,” Brad laughed and gave up.   
“My lower back is killing me,” Yuuji complained.   
“I’d say schedule a massage, but they are all Swedish method and inclined to be brutal. Fujimiya would probably kill the poor guy just for doing his job.”  
Aya snored and shifted in his sleep.   
“Speaking of, has anyone seen The Kid?” Yuuji looked over at him only to see the handkerchief. He half sat up and leaned over to pick up one corner of it to peek at Brad’s face, then let it fall.   
“Nope. I assume they’re having food sent up to the honeymoon suite. I’m actually dreading him turning up. He’ll be all smug and ‘I’ve been having mad sex for days’ like it’s something so new,” he drawled sarcastically.  
“I don’t really think he’s that type, do you?”   
“I’ve lost five years of his life, I have no idea what type he’s become.”  
Yuuji drew a deep breath and let it out slow, remembering when Brad had brought the kid in. “I don’t think he’s changed all that much.” Brad had spent so much time, when he had it to spare, sitting by Naoe’s hospital bed through the painful reconstructive operations, practicing his Japanese and keeping the kid sane if not comfortable. Yuuji had been a little jealous. He also remembered the few times he had been in their company, before the Shinjuku time mess. How at fifteen, the kid had looked up to Brad like he was the template for life.   
Somewhere along the way, Yuuji decided, those two had influenced each other. Brad had matured; Nagi had gained some much needed humanity. He might have liked being around to see more of that. After all Yuuji had been heavily invested in watching Brad grow, from the first time he had set eyes on the four eyed little weasel who had mouthed off to his instructor one too many times, and, probably with good cause.   
“Yuuji,” a familiar voice said. “Your mother wants you.”   
Yuuji looked up to see an outrageously florid Hawaiian shirt and a panama hat that did nothing to detract from Sarazawa Ishida’s sternness. He sighed, gathered up his long limbs and got to his feet. “Where is she?”   
“Where else? In the lab,” his father confiscated the lounge chair he had vacated, giving the sleeping Aya a wary look.  
“Not playing cards? Well that’s a relief,” Yuuji said. “I’m beginning to be chased by them in my dreams.”   
When he was gone, Ishida looked over at Brad. “Well, young Crawford, what have you been up to? Besides plotting the death of everyone on board?” he asked dryly.   
Brad smiled. He’d always found Yuuji’s taciturn father amusing when he did have something to say. “Thinking.”   
“Ah. Well, it can’t be helped, can it?” Ishida pulled his hat down more over his face and made himself more comfortable. “Now that the wife has gotten her way, peace reigns in the house. I should thank you.”   
“You’re welcome,” Brad said. “After all the Council did for me, it’s apparently the least I could do for the Brotherhood.” His tone was sardonic.  
“Greifeldt told us you’d seen your records,” Ishida said with a resigned sigh.  
“Umm,” Brad noised under the handkerchief.   
“I suppose—you have questions.”   
There was silence for a while. Then Brad said quietly, “Is it even important?”   
“Well,” Ishida said, leaving it open.   
Brad took the handkerchief off his face and sat up, looking at him. “No,” he said. The past was gone. It had little to nothing to do with now, except that he had survived it. “If anything, I would like the records expunged. The only thing that should matter at all, is my talent.”  
Ishida let this sink in. “The council would have to discus it. You have to remember, your blood line and your talent saved you. Saved us. People would be reluctant to loose that.”  
“I’m not a fucking gothic cathedral,” Brad said flatly. “Not a national treasure…”  
“Do not take that tone with me,” Ishida stated sternly. “Let the council decide, and live with the decision, since you chose to abdicate as Leader.”  
Brad got up and walked away before he did something very stupid. 

@ @ @

Schuldig came back to their cabin looking a little less frazzled, and found Brad sitting on the balcony he had objected to with a glass of wine and an aura of lock down. “What’s up?” he asked coming to stand beside his chair.   
“It’s a wonder people don’t go insane at sea,” was Brad’s answer. He picked up the wine and sipped it, then set the glass down again.   
“Hmm,” Schuldig said, then tentatively put an hand across to Brad’s other shoulder and leaned on him a little. He looked out over the water. Except for the wake of the ship, far behind them and out of site, there was little to see except little flickers of white foam as the surface waves crossed. Occasionally, there would be another ship, or a tanker, or cargo container ship at a vast distance, but that was it. “But a plane is boring, too,” he concluded. “Just faster.”  
Brad glanced up at him, then back out over the ‘view’. “Australia, then Argentina, except we might not make it to Argentina,” he picked up the wine again to sip.   
“Are we going to freeze to death?” Schuldig asked.   
“You know the further I look into the future, the more likely things are to change before my prediction can come true,” Brad reminded him.   
Schuldig’s hand tightened a little on his shoulder, then relaxed again. “So why so glum? You usually only hit the grape when you’re in a melancholy mood.   
“Nosy telepath,” Brad chided.   
“Entitled to be nosy telepath,” Schuldig said. “You’re mein mann and I have certain implied privileges by common law, no?”  
Brad snorted a little laugh. “Next you’ll try to put a leash on me.”  
“Better than having to put a chastity belt,” Schuldig countered. “Although, god knows what your little sperm are up to,” he added sullenly. “Frau Doctor wastes no time, I’m sure.”   
“Don’t remind me,” Brad grumbled.   
Schuldig leaned over to murmur in his ear. “Tell me, did you think of me?”  
Brad laughed again, more easily this time. “No, actually not.”  
“Bastard!” Schuldig smacked him on the closer shoulder.   
“Are you insane?” Brad looked up at him, smiling wryly. “Of course I did. How the hell else was I supposed to get the job done?” He reached up to put an arm around the annoying red head.   
Schuldig still frowned. “Well, I can think of one way. And I can tell you now, if you thought about that blond pervert instead of me, your offspring will all be low grade morons,” he asserted.   
“Oh, really,” Brad scoffed and picked up his wine with his free hand. “I don’t want to hear another word about any of it. And I mean that, if you want to keep your teeth.”  
Schuldig caught the edge in his tone and thought that perhaps he would keep his mouth shut, then. ‘See, I am learning,’ he thought to himself, and settled himself against Brad’s shoulder to look out over the ocean and let his mind drift in the silence.

 


	6. Chapter 6

The following few weeks were moribund with boredom. Even the children had settled down to just lounging about with tablets, or sleeping, rather than running around like the little monsters they were. Card games had taken on a deadly new level of competition. Brad found himself with sparing partners who were out for blood.   
Yuuji had decided to torture Aya with gymnastic exercises. Aya had seen him in action a few times out of the corner of an eye when they were in Weiss, but never had he imagined what the man could really get up to. He also discovered new muscles and new pains he had also never imagined. Yuuji had trained from youth, but Aya was already hard set, so to speak, and his sense of gravity and balance were not accepting being messed with. He was however, good at running, and at climbing ropes, because of the well toughened muscles in his arms and torso, and the practice chasing down his quarry with that big damned sword in his hands.   
Nagi and Tot finally came out of hiding, and were often found either in the lounge chairs on the deck or in the lounge rooms, sitting side by side, holding hands and chatting quietly (well, quietly for Tot was subjective), eyes only for each other now, rather than their game devices. Brad found he still didn’t like it. He didn’t know why. It was nothing weird about his feelings toward Nagi, he just did not approve. On the other hand, he did not know what he would have approved of. Perhaps this was what people were talking about when they said no one was good enough for their son or daughter? He felt a frisson of creepiness and decided to ignore the whole thing. Too late now. If anything happened to the girl, Nagi would go nuclear, he just knew it. 

@ @ @

“Isn’t he awful?” Chieko sat down beside Aya on the bench in the gym where he was watching Yuuji go through a routine. “He did that before he was born, too,” she said as her son did a triple spin and landed on the mat. “I was afraid he’d strangle himself on the umbilicus in there.”  
Aya hoped she wasn’t going to go on in this vein but he had nothing to worry about. She smiled, enjoying Yuuji’s performance.   
“Is defying gravity part of his talent?” Aya asked hesitantly.   
She grinned at him with a raised eyebrow. “No, but he makes it look like it, doesn’t he? He always said he wanted to do something that had nothing to do with supra-normal Talent, just hard earned talent. I used to be afraid he’d run off and join the circus, and we’d have to drag him back howling like a gibbon.”  
Aya smiled shyly. “All those trophies, you must have been very proud of him.”  
She shrugged. “There’s pride and there’s smug,” she said. “I was terribly smug,” she grinned, and leaned over to nudge him with her elbow. “Because he’s the best,” she nodded.   
“Stop conspiring,” Yuuji came over, wiping himself down with a towel. “It’s never good when your mother and your—well—conspire.”   
“Yuu-chan, can’t you say ‘boyfriend’?” his mother asked archly.   
He rolled his eyes. “Partner,” he corrected, glancing at Aya. “Let’s keep it politically inoffensive.   
“He was always stodgy,” She confided in Aya.   
“Go climb a rope,” Yuuji swatted Aya on the thigh with the towel.  
Aya sighed and got up.   
“I don’t want him swinging that sword around in the cabin, or in the gym,” Yuuji explained to his mother’s curious look. “I’ve seen what he can do with it.” He sat down next to her. “What’s up?”  
“I can’t find a thing in his DNA or his skull that accounts for his talent,” she said. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with a conundrum.”  
Yuuji laughed. “Other than that?”  
Before they had left, Traugott was nice enough (or amused enough) to allow Chieko to run a physical on her. Chieko had told her the truth; that she was trying to determine if there was a difference between people possessed by so ‘non-human’ beings and congenital talent. She wanted to find out what was going on with Fujimiya. She had also obtained Traugott’s host body’s previous medical records in preparation.   
Compared to her previous existence, Gudrun Traugott was now almost physically perfect. Despite the glasses, her eye sight was perfect, her hearing was more than perfect, her reaction times, her body functions, everything was perfect. Scars from childhood were disappearing. According to her dental records, her teeth, which had had a few fillings and some minor disorder in their line up, were lining up. Oddly, the fillings had fallen out, revealing that the teeth were, impossibly, healing, the cavities closing up.   
Aya had flaws. Scars from childhood and up. The missing rib was not growing back. His teeth were a bit crooked, his hearing normal for his age (too much loud music in ear buds). He also showed no sign of the denser layer of tissue anywhere in his brain. Now that she knew what to look for, she had calibrated the machine to detect it. Nothing. But then Traugott did not have it either. That left only one possibility. The boy had something in there, but who the hell knew what.   
“I want to speak to Schuldig. Aya told me the telepath had some sort of bad reaction to him at one point.”  
“I keep warning him you’re evil and not to talk to you,” Yuuji watched Aya shinny up the rope, then slide down again.   
His mother laughed her most wicked laugh. “You don’t think he’s as curious as I am about why he’s ‘lucky’? You don’t give that boy much credit most of the time, do you?” She looked at him seriously. “Yuu-chan, you need to change your thinking. You’ve spent years now looking down on people who aren’t as worldly as you are, and it’s made you arrogant. It’s going to get you killed again, if you keep underestimating people.”   
He leaned back on the wall and sighed, closing his eyes. “I hate to say it, but you’re right. I know where it’s coming from. The fake personality that damned doctor foisted on me. That train wreck Kudoh’s manufactured depression sneaks up on me sometimes. It’s always there in the back of my head, like scars from manacles.” And, he hated to think it, but he associated Aya too strongly with that personality.   
“You’ve talked to the telepath?” she asked.   
Yuuji snorted. He wasn’t about to tell his mother what he’d done to, well, with the telepath, even if half of it was Brad’s idea. “Brad thinks I need to get over this on my own.”  
“Brad is not a doctor,” she stated. “You’re not taking any pills are you?” she added suspiciously.   
“No. Just Nicotine patches. Gods, I hope that doesn’t catch up with me in twenty years. I’m trying to cut back on it.”   
“Oh, I doubt it. No one in our family for the past two generations has had any sign of cancer after the bomb,” she patted his leg. “Besides, I threw that gene out ages ago. But don’t tell the Jews,” she whispered jokingly. “Our young people are a little too healthy, but you can expect one more big war so not to worry. We won’t be eating soylent green. Anyway, soy gives you man boobs. And nicotine adds to the chemical change that gives you depression. Maybe you should switch to an anti-depressant, just for a little while.”   
Yuuji could tell when his mother was stressed over something, or at least thinking too much. He slipped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her lightly. “No one is going to blame you if everyone starts having four arms or something,” he teased, kissing her on the head. “One more time, Aya!” he called. “I want to see you actually sweat!”  
Aya lasered him with that glare and grasped the rope again.   
“Anyone would think he actually could kill you with that look,” Chieko said, impressed.   
“You want to know what’s inside him, I think that’s where that comes from,” Yuuji said, feeling just a little creepy about it. “I’ve seen that purple black thing in his pupils. They all have weird eyes. Traugott, Nurse, Mephisto. You look into their pupils and there’s something inhuman in there. Something that sent Herr Holzeweber into retirement with half his mind gone.” He wasn’t going to mention the other side effects, that was privileged information. Plus, Brad would kill him.  
“Interesting,” his mother said. “Anyway, if you see that red headed terror, tell him to come to see me.” She wiggled her fingers at him, meaning use his talent to enforce the order.   
“Why don’t you just use the ship’s intercom?” Yuuji watched Aya climb the rope again. At this point in time the last thing he wanted was a cigarette and a tumbler of whisky. He had something else Aya could climb.  
“Because he will forget half way to the lab what he’s doing,” Chieko gave him a look. “I had him in one my biology classes. He has the attention span of a butterfly.”   
“He’s not that bad,” Yuuji said. Yeah, he was going to show Aya a few rope tricks. Then he came to his senses and looked at his mother. “I’ll tell him when I see him. He’ll find you if you’re not in the lab.”  
“Forewarned is forearmed,” she sighed. 

@ @ @ 

The guilty party showed up in pair of green cargo shorts, a pale pink muscle t-shirt and sandals, with his hair in a half bun, half pony tail mess that did not at all make him look like a ‘soyboy-bunman’ type. He had a nice tan going, and the little freckles were just a scattering of sun-kisses, rather that that patchy thing some red heads got. All in all, a pleasant eyeful, even for an old married woman, she smirked to herself. Professional observation, she reminded herself, was quite different from being an old couger.   
“Sarazawa said you wanted to see me, Frau Doctor?” he said half aggressive, half regretful. Naturally all these boys had issues with being hauled into the ‘baby doctor’.   
She smiled ruefully. As much as she wanted to tease him, she indicated the door into her little office with the one porthole window. “Come and sit down,” she went in, taking off her lab coat and hanging it up, then sitting behind the little desk.   
One quarter moving forward, one quarter standing still, half fleeing, she thought as he came in. He sat in the little folding chair before the desk, his nicely formed face wary. He was catlike, she thought, with those high cheek bones and fine lined chin. A red point siamese. Most likely some Slavic in his background. Well, it couldn’t be helped, with the raping that went on at the end of the second world war. A lot of women had kept the babies just to have something to care for and brighten their miserable lives. Things were different back then. It might explain Leisl’s raging insanity, too.   
She saw his face go blank, then his eyes widen and realized she had been letting her mind ramble again.   
Schuldig’s fist came down on the desk so swiftly she was not aware he had moved until he startled her, despite her looking right at him. She ignored the anger and put her hand over his fist. “Dieter,” she said quietly, firmly. “My apologies. It was the last batch the Elders over saw, and it still weighs on me how horrible things went.”   
He snatched his hand away and flung himself back in the chair, closing up on himself, hugging himself, so angry he might as well be a fire starter, too. “You brought me here to discus my ancestry?” he said coldly.   
“No, actually, I just wondered off on a mental tangent, like the silly old scientist I am,” she deflected his anger with sincerity. “I wanted to ask you about your experience with looking into Fujimiya’s head. Nothing has turned up in his DNA or any of his brain scans to indicate what is in there.”  
“Well, I could have told you that,” he sniped. “There is nothing in his head but---” he stopped short, and smiled broadly. “Ask away, Frau Doctor.”  
Hmm, she wondered what that had been about. Telepaths.   
Then the light went on. It was her turn for the eyes to widen. She put a hand over her mouth, and then laughed.   
Schuldig started to laugh, too.   
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Let’s get back to science, shall, we?”  
“I looked into it at Yuuji’s request,” Schuldig tried to center himself. “I had been monitoring the team he was in, Kritiker’s Weiss, so I had read his surface mind before, at a distance, or during a confrontation. This time I was to go deeper, to find out if he had a talent.” He continued on as if giving a report. “He had fear that it was his fault his sister had been nearly murdered. That people who attempted to harm him had always come to harm, and that harm could be by default, deflected on to those near him. There was reason for this investigation. Yuuji thought perhaps his orders to dispose of Fujimiya’s family had lead to his—accident—in the Middle East. I was there when we set the bomb off at Fujimiya's house. He was lucky; his sister was not. Oddly, nothing that I can think of happened to us, but then, we had no intent of killing him personally, nor did Yuuji, so we were curious.”  
“And in his head?” she drew him back.   
“When I finally got him irate enough, at the point where he was shrinking into himself, no longer fighting me but fleeing in his own mind, this—thing—came at me. It came out like a shark from deep well water. An unexpected horror, just suddenly there, I was—terrified,” he admitted with some shame. “The feel of it, the black emptiness trying to—consume me. It was like a wave of horrific fear with an agenda. At that point, it did not feel like Fujimiya’s mind any more. I don’t know if it’s part of him, or an alternative him, but it is IN him.”  
“Like Traugott, perhaps?”  
He shook his head. “To me, and I know, to Crawford, Traugott is just not there. These things—hide very well. Mephisto, Nurse, Traugott, you only know they are there, because they are there in front of you. I can’t sense them, their physical presence. They are like—holograms. Outside the timeline. Except physical.” He tapped his head. “I can be in a room with them and they just aren’t there, until they move or speak. It’s like a chair suddenly moving on its own. If I’m not looking directly at them, focused on them, they ‘disappear’ from my perception.”   
“Well, the reason I called you in is that I can’t find any of this in their DNA, not Traugott, not Fujimiya. And you know we would like very much to have ‘invincible’ DNA in our arsenal,” she smiled wolfishly.  
“He can be hurt, Doctor,” Schuldig said. “But not easily. I tried indirectly one time, just playing around. I had a girl try to shoot him. It was like trying to pour cold molasses, and she only got him in the shoulder, because the idiot just stood there, not believing she would kill him even though I was standing there telling her to, and she did not want to. She was fighting me, and I wondered why it was so easy for her to fight back. It really does seem to be tied to ‘intent’ and direct intent. Then he gets very lucky indeed.”  
“Hmmm,” she thought about all this.   
After too long a moment of quiet, he squirmed. “Frau Doctor….” He hesitated. “The little fire bug…?” he looked at her squarely. “She had red hair,” he added flatly.   
She shook her head dismissively. “That was quite a cocktail mix, believe me. I destroyed everything. The Elders were the ones playing with fire. The Freeborn project is back on track, as intended. We only take volunteers and limit it to one child out of the family, the rest must belong biologically to both their parents.”  
“Free Born,” he said slowly. “No longer slaves to those who would just use us.” He smiled a little. “That is good, Doctor.” He stood up, then hesitated again. “How many volunteers—for precognitive offspring?” he worded it very carefully.   
She smiled. “That’s medical and private,” she said. “Run along, Schuldig.”  
He pouted in good nature and left.   
She sighed and slumped. Well, what ever came of Fujimiya’s bloodline, the Brotherhood had him now. She just hated not knowing what to do with him.

@ @ @

“Mutiny is brewing,” Schuldig informed Brad. “Or at least lots of people are planning it for the fun of it.”   
Once again, they were lounging in the sun, Brad covered head to toe, Schuldig in skimpy bathing shorts and sunblock. This ‘vacation’ was now like some insane life sentence. Energy was draining, they had to force themselves to work out. The shooting range was getting used more and more; there was now a waitlist to blow the hell out of paper targets. Someone had mentioned running up the skull and crossbones and attacking the next cruise ship to cross their path. Maybe it was a joke, maybe not. The twenty five foot long Great White that had been trailing the ship for a few days was utterly ignored except for the kids taking pot shots at its dorsal fin with their Christmas rifles. The ex-mime stayed locked in his cabin, possibly a little precognitive himself.   
Supposedly they would be seeing the shore of Australia and Sydney harbor in a day or two.   
“Nothing surprising there. What’s really amazing is that no one has shot themselves in suicide.” Brad drawled. “Tell me something new.”  
“The Japanese are up to something with lots of machinery and calculations,” Schuldig informed him. “They think they will find the UFOs. It’s all theory and polite arguments concealing such violence. Rather like you.”  
“Don’t even try to pick a fight,” Brad drawled mildly.   
“But sex is so boring, I thought we would have a big fight and then have angry make up sex.” Schuldig was half asleep.  
“Normally I would beat you senseless for saying that, but yes, boring.”  
Schuldig looked over at him in annoyance, then gave up. Now even arguing was boring. /We could abduct Sarazawa and see if he has any tricks left,/ he thought at Brad with a grin of merriment.  
Brad took the handkerchief off his face and looked at him in consternation. Then he put the handkerchief back and was silent. Eventually he said, “Read a book if you’re so bored.”  
Schuldig sighed. “I’ve read so many books they are all alike now. Same plots, book after book.”  
“Read older books. People had different minds back then,” Brad suggested.   
“Old school boring,” Schuldig said.   
“What were you like as a child?” Brad asked.   
“Over sensitive and a sissy,” Schuldig responded calmly.   
“Nothing has changed, then,” Brad laughed.  
“Fuck you,” the red head retorted with out rancor.   
“Land!” someone over enthusiastically yelled from an upper deck patio above them. “Oh, thank god, land!” he cried, as if they had been lost at see for months.   
“I know how he feels,” Schuldig muttered. 

@ @ @

When they were finally anchored off Sydney harbor, someone got the brilliant idea of jet ski jousting. They used the shuffle board sticks for (what is that thing?) , and the lounge chair padding for armor. The boredom was temporarily assuaged, mayhem occurred, and nine people ended up in the sick bay with busted ribs, broken arms, cracked collar bones, two concussions, whiplash, and half drowned, and the Captain called a halt to it.   
Brad had a sneaking suspicion who had put that brilliant idea in their heads.   
Mah-Jongg broke out. Someone had bought a very nicely made set the first day in town, and suddenly it was a free for all. You might have thought the ship was a floating Chinatown gambling den, the way people carried on. Scanned and printed out copies of the instructions were shared around and the various styles of rules; Hong Kong, Singapore, Bejing, Whatever; were argued over as if it were a world shaking concern. The shops in Sydney ran out of game sets, and more were over nighted at awful shipping rates.   
The Japanese engineers took advantage of the stay in harbor, and dropped a modified armored combat unit into the water. Half an hour later, cheers of ‘Yatta!’ and ‘Bonzai’ broke out as they hauled it back up again with a rather large shark by the tail in its claws. The shark’s top fin proved to be peppered with .22 shot.  
“No, just no,” Brad told Yuuji in one of the lounges. The clatter of Mah-Jongg tiles was fighting with the classical music piped over the ship’s speaker system.   
“You’re no fun,” Yuuji informed him. “It’s an Agatha Cristie classic. You’d be perfect for the character. You’ve got that whole 1920s thing going with your hair.”  
“I hate drama, and this is amateur drama, with an armed audience. Of all the tacky shipboard things, Masked Balls and Amateur Dramatics is proof the ‘vacation’ is long over.” Brad complained.  
“You’re cheating,” Chieko accused Brad as he snagged another tile for his suite of bamboo.   
“I am not,” he stated, a warning look on his face. “Everyone always accuses me of cheating!”  
“You’d better not be,” she grumbled and selected a tile to turn over. Happily, it was seven of coins, one she wanted.  
“Stop taking everything so personally, Chieko, it’s only a game,” her husband reminded her.   
She sneered at him, and increased her bet on the side of the table.  
Yuuji pulled a tile and added it to his bamboo set with a grin.   
Brad sat back, giving up.   
Everyone glared at him. He looked innocent, “What?”   
“You are cheating,” Chieko accused.   
“I’m not cheating, I just saw who won, that’s all,” Brad defended himself. “There is a difference, you know.”   
“Who won?” Yuuji asked.   
His mother smacked him on the arm.   
The ship left for Punto Arenas the next day, with no losses of life.

 


	7. Chapter 7

  
Brad was beginning to wonder if Yuuji’s mother had thrown out all of her husband’s non-vacation clothing. It was a little difficult to deal seriously with a Gestapo Grupenfuhrur who wore brightly printed short sleeved shirts and shorts all the time. There were days he still suspected he had woken up into a nightmare rather than suffered a post Shinjuku ‘demon quake’ induced time glitch. He, along with Schuldig, Yuuji and Aya, sat in the living-room-now-office of a cabin suite set aside as command center. The sliding doors were open to yet another large balcony, currently with a view of the harbor of Punto Arenas, Argentina.   
“While we are here, you and Schulder (Brad heard Schuldig’s mental shriek) and a number of other teams are going into the interior,” Sarazawa Ishida informed them. “You are to contact the long standing Germanic communities for information. They will be wary. As you are no doubt aware, over the decades, the CIA and the Jews have consistently raided them for connections to the Old Reich. A cherished photo of a loved one in uniform, a porcelain dish from Allach sent as a gift from the Homeland, and the Jews are at the door, insisting on life imprisonment for people who were actually never involved in the first place. Yuuji, you and Fujimiya will stay on board. We are interested in what the Volk have to say, and they might not feel comfortable talking in front of obvious non-Europeans.”  
“Is there anything in particular we’re looking for?” Brad asked. He was aware of the German ethnic colonies in South America, but not that it was anything of major concern to Esset, or had been for decades. The Brotherhood had aided a number of people to immigrate to Argentina and other South American countries, but as far as he knew the majority of the old colonies were hands off; farmers and ranchers not interested in the ‘agenda’.   
/Hitler and Eva’s bones,/ Schuldig muttered in his head.   
/Shush,/ Brad warned.   
“The rumors, of course,” Ishida answered. “Oral histories, journals, family legends, anything. We know a number of the younger Brotherhood settled here after the second world war, refugees and also from the prisoner of war camps in the USA, looking for a life of peace and quiet after that whole debacle. People here were more than willing to take in young people to work on the farms and ranches. And then there were the U-boats. Supposedly they came along the coasts, sunk their vessels, then trekked inland. The Elders were never interested in investigating further into this. The paper work young Naoe found indicates that those rumors were true; more Krieg marine than suspected took this route. Just go find out what you can. However,” and here he made a sort of wincing face. “Be nice about it. You’re dealing with our own people. No shooting, no torture,” he said sternly.   
“Damn,” Schuldig snapped his fingers.   
Brad gave him an evil look then regarded Ishida again. “And these two?” he indicated Yuuji and Aya.   
“Will correlate the data and write up the reports,” Ishida gave his son a stern look as Yuuji wilted slightly. “Naturally, if anyone wants to join, run a field check and if they pass, tell them to report to the ship. And put that hair up under a hat or something,” he looked at Schuldig. “Wear sunglasses. You’re going to be dealing with senior citizens who have worked physical labor all their lives. You don’t want to give them heart failure.”  
Schuldig made a little noise of complaint but accepted the sentence gracelessly.

@ @ @

“If you’re going to play GPS, at least announce every turn in a sexy voice,” Schuldig said as the rented jeep rumbled down the rather rough, country road. It was paved, all right, but very narrow with barely two lanes and a good amount of muddy dirt to get stuck in if you went too far off the edge.   
“What turns?” Brad said as the road snaked another waver as if trying to shake them off into the jungle growth.   
Schuldig hung on to the ‘oh shit’ bar and looked grim. “Warn me before we get there, so I can put my hat on.” He had a twill and net ‘hiking hat’ to put on. His scalp already felt like something was growing on it and he wished he’d never read that news article about how people got mold like sloth’s fur if they didn’t watch it in the jungle.   
“You’ll see cultivated fields or something first,” Brad responded.   
“Perhaps you could slow down a little, just for my stomach’s sake.”   
“Stop worrying, and stop distracting me. I want to get this over with.”  
“You’ve seen something?” Schuldig looked at his profile.   
“Let’s just say, I know we have something that will interest the council. But I still want to see with my own eyes. Premonitions based on rumors are still just rumors,” he added grimly.   
Schuldig hated this frustration. Not to mention he was sorry he had had lunch, this road was not exactly the best. Rather like the roads in England where you just prayed no one was coming in the other direction. “I still don’t believe it. Flying saucers and all that crap.”  
“Or spider men, or giant catfish with tentacles, or androids made from magic, or shifting through time….”  
“Shut up, Crawford,” Schuldig said, and was very pleased with himself.   
Brad just laughed at him and deliberately wiggled the wheel to make the car swerve all over the road. Schuldig barely managed not to throw up.

@ @ @

More than the stray submariners, they hit very strange pay dirt. Yes, people in this region were habitually secretive, but once they heard German spoken the old way, they talked. Yes, so-and-so had seen such-and-such. Family records had this and that remarked on; all very cautious, all very willing to help, but wary of traps. People just wanted that damned war to be over with. Seventy plus years was a long time to be fighting the same old prejudices.   
But there were the disappearances.   
Every decade or so, up until the 90s, there was a history of strange disappearances. One or two, even three young people went missing every decade. Mostly young women, but sometimes, boys.   
“All good farm girls who go missing did not just hie off to the city for the fancy life, as the Argentine police leeringly suggest.” One very elderly but healthy gentleman sitting on his porch confided to Brad in his strong Hanoverian accent over tall glasses of iced tea. “Especially not after the weird lights and strange noises in the sky. Always, they are seen and heard early mornings and evenings before someone disappears. It does not happen often, but when it does, always someone is soon reported missing. As if someone were collecting the best,” he fell silent for a moment, thinking, an old pain crossing his features. “They did not just run off. Ask Harold Garber. His twin brother, back in the 50’s, when he was just fourteen. He woke up in the night and saw a blinding light through their bedroom window and passed out. His brother was gone when he woke the next morning. There were muddy foot prints on the floor. The boy was never found. Harold swears he would know if his twin were dead. Feel it here,” the old man touched his chest over his heart. “But we have never heard from them again. If they had just run off, why wouldn’t someone eventually say something, ten, twenty years later, as many as went, no one even wrote home in regret? We are sad, but no one believes us. UFOs, feh,” he made a gesture of smoke going up with a hand. “What would little green men do with our youth?”   
Brad wondered about that himself. It was—disconcerting to think about. After all, the kami appeared to have need of human shaman for the transfer of one of their own into a human, willing or not. (And he had that package sitting on the bureau on the ship to deal with.) They did not need ‘flying saucers’ to get to them. He thought about Dr. Mephisto, waking up under the rubble of the Shinjuku quake with amnesia and off the meter ‘magical’ powers. No, it was not aliens.   
He wrote down all the names of the missing the old man could remember under Schuldig’s careful prodding. It added up. Twenty-three missing over fifty or so years; but when you thought about the whole thing, it made sense. Not enough in a period of time to alert the authorities to some sort of serial killer, but more than enough to add new blood to a breeding colony every time a generation came to maturity. Brad smiled ruefully to himself. Maybe there was something to it. 

@ @ @

Sarazawa Ishida read the reports coming in with mild alarm. Why had no one in the communities informed the Brotherhood? On the other hand, if aliens or such an air-going vessel were actually in existence, why had the Elders not been interested in them?   
So the obvious conclusion was that who ever was abducting these young persons was interested in maintaining a well blooded community of their own. A German specific group, and from the records those who were blond and blue eyed, who met the old original SS standards set by Himmler before he ‘evolved’ in his thinking.   
Lights in the sky, strange noises, and disappearances, people abducted from their beds. If he didn’t have good reason to believe it was true, he might have laughed. UFOs and ‘paradises’ under the ice of ‘Ultima Thule’. The world would truly surprise him yet again, if he did not watch out, he thought wryly. 

@ @ @

“Oh, dear, we have blown off course in a terrible storm,” Schuldig said days later with over dramatic and very sarcastic alarm as the ship slowly turned to leave Punto Arenas harbor on the bright, sunny, but chill day. “And still I have no fur coat,” he added bitterly.  
“You have a fur trim on your thermal jacket, don’t whine,” Brad told him. For some reason the old man at the estancia stuck in his mind. To have lived an agrarian life like that, master of your family, master of your land, and yet---so boring. He didn’t think he could cope with this ‘cycle of life’ thing. Maybe the lights in the sky were not so much alien abductions as a match to a fire to those young people. A sign that there were things out there, more than day to day slogging on a farm or ranch, and that fire had been lit. A sign to get up and go or be stuck for the rest of your life? Were they abducted? Or did they just pack up and run?  
Schuldig smacked a hand down on the ship’s railing to emphasize his frustration. “I want a fur coat!”  
“Why?” Brad turned to ask him.  
Schuldig huffed a sigh. “Well, because it seems to annoy you no end that I want one,” he said snippily. “You seem to enjoy not letting me wear what I want to wear. In fact everyone complains.” He had been stuck with a baseball cap over his taped up mop for hours a day, and had to take a shower the moment they were back on the boat. And even though he had used blue painter’s tape, an alarming amount of coppery strands had come off when he pulled it off. Even now, he kept running his fingers through it to see if it had not gotten a little thinner.   
Brad smiled wryly. “Oh, so it’s my fault again that I’m being annoyed, is it? You seem to enjoy wearing things you know will annoy me.”  
“Don’t be such a patriarchal bastard, I wear what I want to wear because it makes me happy, not for you to look at,” Schuldig countered obnoxiously.   
“As nice as your legs are, I don’t approve of mini-skirts on men,” Brad pointedly informed him.   
“That was plaid, which makes it a kilt, and you didn’t even know me back then. And I do have nice thighs,” he ran his hands over them over his cargo shorts and then up a few inches up under the hems, biting his lower lip at Brad with a sultry smile.   
“Will you stop doing things like that!” Brad glanced around. They were alone on the upper deck. Almost everyone who wanted to watch the shore fade was down on the larger main promenade deck. Not a lot of people bothered this time. You’d left one harbor, you’d left them all. “Plaid doesn’t make a mini-skirt a kilt!” he hissed.   
“You could do it right now; bend me over the railing,” Schuldig teased sultrily.   
“Shove you overboard, more likely,” Brad threatened.   
“Ah, but you know you’d like to,” Schuldig dropped the act like a brick and leaned back on the railing with his arms crossed and the breeze blowing his hair across his chin and bare throat. “So, what do you think? All the intel?” he combed his fingers through his hair, pushing it back out of his eyes, to little avail.   
Brad scowled at him. One, because he was right; he would like to just….and Two….the pest knew he was right. “I think there may be something in the abductions, but that could just as easily be helicopters. There is a prison in the region. Perhaps searching for escapees. Isolated communities, small towns out in a sketchy country, in a region known as a haven for criminal paramilitary groups, sex slavery and drug gangs? Fair whites would bring a high premium. However, one asks, why take one teen and not the other? The good scholastic record thing might be allegory. And in every case, the family has a few children left. None of the single child families were affected. That points to something. I think criminals would just shoot everyone and grab all the children.” Brad trailed off, thinking, then shook his head. He didn’t like to think of such things. He normally just slaughtered them as they came up.   
“Well, then we just have to go see,” Schuldig concluded. “Are we close enough yet?”   
“I’d rather not ruin the surprise,” Brad said lightly. And then there was the whole thing with Traugott and the little package. He was loath to open it. Traugott had said he would know when it was time, so he waited. As much as he wanted to just toss it overboard, he had a feeling she would be waiting for him when he eventually returned to Rosencruz, and that would just be rude, he frowned to himself. Very rude indeed. He was beginning to realize he should be very afraid of Traugott and her ilk. 

@ @ @ 

Nagi had been reading the reports. “It must be. Fresh blood for the colony. They’re too smart to just inbreed like other self isolated groups. But nothing more since the 90s?” The ship had quite a lot of rooms available under the circumstances, and they had confiscated a corner one of the forward lounges that had been outfitted with desks and power plug ins, sort of a wifi café with out the hipsters, homeless and vandwellers.   
“Maybe they lost the ability to travel,” Brad offered. “If, and I’m not saying I believe it quite yet, if they had those machines, they were 60 years old when the abductions ceased. They might have cobbled parts for a while, but eventually, the last one would fail from wear and tear.”   
Nagi looked up, his navy blue eyes thoughtful. “The engineers will have them in pieces the first day we locate them. Hell, they might even be able to improve on them with the new technology.”   
“’Futuristic’ tech seventy yeas old,” Schuldig scoffed from where he leaned on the wall, arms crossed. ‘Is it even worth it? We have jets, who needs ‘flying saucers’.”  
“If anything is worth it, recovering those people is,” Yuuji stated. “We have no idea what conditions they’re living under.”  
Both Aya and Brad looked at him with consternation. He frowned. “What? They’re our people, this isn’t ‘Kudoh’ being heroic, this is ME,” he pointed to his own chest. “It could be Lord of the Flies time down there, or something.”  
“It could also be just a pseudo-military colony trying to survive the best they can under straitened circumstances,” Nagi said, “But yeah, they’re our people. If they’re not all dead.”  
“Still sounds like ‘Kudoh’,” Aya muttered disapprovingly. “Rush in and save everyone, no thought for your own life.”  
“I’m not suicidal,” Yuuji countered.  
“Oh, stop,” Brad said. “Keep this in your own suite, the rest of us don’t want to hear it.”  
“I do,” Schuldig said, eyes wide with his usual annoying ‘in your face' nosiness, and he knew it, so it was a parody of himself. “Are we still have the issues with the fake personality.”   
“And you have a hell of nerve, ‘Mr. Jump off a three story building yelling ‘Shineeee’,” Yuuji countered at Aya. “If that awning hadn’t been there….”  
Brad put his fingers to his lips and whistled ear piercingly. He knew damned well he shouldn’t use his gun in here. “Enough!” he ordered. “We have got to get off this ship!”  
Schuldig giggled. Nagi heaved a deep sigh and shook his head. Nothing had changed.   
“And NO, I won’t look into the future to see what is going to happen,” Brad stated. “No matter what, Esset plans to go in, if not for survivors then for the technology and to recover the base.”  
“And then there is Frau Traugott’s little package,” Nagi said. “Let’s be honest here, if there is any possibility of a ‘paradise’ under the glaciers, the Kami will see to it.”   
“You sound a little disappointed,” Schuldig looked at him. “I thought you got along with Miss Thing.”  
“It’s just that—it’s like living in a padded box,” Nagi stated. “The creepy feeling that if we do get into serious trouble, Nanny will take us firmly by our wrists and wash our sticky hands and put us back in the nursery with bread and warm milk,” he grumbled.   
Brad snorted, “Only if we ask nicely, and then some,” was his opinion.   
“You missed five years of Rosencruz,” Nagi reminded him. “You’re not allowed to shoot or just crush anyone any more. Traugott has to investigate the complaint first and refer it to Herr Sarazawa in his capacity as school Chancellor. It takes all the spontaneity out of killing someone who annoys the hell out of you,” he sulked. “And Terminals week has been reduced to paint balls and markers. No live ammo or serious weapons. You try slitting someone’s throat with a red Sharpie marker.”   
“We’ve got to get you out more often,” Schuldig said with sympathy.   
“The good part is the marker is ‘permanent’, so they can’t get rid of it for weeks. Now people try for the most humiliatingly visible ‘wound’. Or at least one that will get talked about,” Nagi smirked.   
Yuuji had to laugh at that one. “That’s horrible,” he snickered. “Maybe we should go back for refresher classes,” he looked at Brad with a grin.  
“Back to business,” Brad warned with a wry smile for Yuuji that triggered both red head’s jealousy. Schuldig had learned of the campaign of terror that these two had conducted in their final three years as students. There were Esset people who had full on melt downs if they so much as heard the word “Crawford”.   
“Well it would be nice to know if the base has been collapsed under the ice and we have to dig it out or is actually just thriving away under there with no idea that the war hasn’t ended,” Nagi grumped, shooting Brad a pissed off look.  
“They must know the war is over, if they’ve been swiping people,” Schuldig said, for once with out being a jerk about it.  
“Alright, but I’m talking trope here,” Nagi flipped a pencil into the air and let it keep spinning there.   
“The only way to find out, is to go in,” Brad said simply.   
“What happens to the people the Grupenfuhrur and Traugott decide are actually in need of extermination?” Schuldig asked.   
“Fertilizer,” Nagi said, almost exactly imitating Brad’s tone of voice if not pitch. 

@ @ @

“Wife....”   
“I am a doctor,” Chieko stated, not about to let Ishida get in the way this time. “Even if there are not living people there, I will still need to perform on the spot autopsies, take samples and be there in case of accidents.”  
He glared at her. Why had he married a woman who would not obey orders? He liked his life ordered. He liked things that stayed where he put them. His work and all his hobbies involved making things well ordered and perfect and they stayed that way; well, except his garden, which he was constantly perfecting, but this—aberrant woman….”There are radios, let someone younger do it.”  
“Pfffft!” she blew at him. “Are you saying I’m old?”   
Whoops. “Well…No….” he rubbed the back of his neck. “Chieko-chan, why can’t you listen to me for once?” he tried to mentally will her into seeing reason. Too bad he had no fraction of his golden child's ability to hypnotize people. “Anything could happen out there. It’s the most hostile to human life place on the planet.”   
“Because I always listen to you,” she retorted. “Sarazawa Ishida, it is the 21st century, not the 18th. You’ll be there, don’t you think you and all those big brave soldiers can protect me? From what? Mutant killer penguins? Yeti?”  
He frowned. He had not considered that. “No, there can’t be Yeti.”   
“Have there been any major earthquakes in the Antarctic lately?” she asked archly.   
“Beside the point!” he recovered himself. “The best way to protect you is to keep you here on the boat!”  
“Wrap me in plastic, too, while you are at it! You’re not cutting me out of this amazingly historical moment just because you’re a—a—husband!” she flung her hands in the air.  
He sighed. “I don’t suppose you have a clone hidden away somewhere, just in case?” He crossed his arms, looking at her grimly.   
Her mouth fell open. She closed it. She opened it again, then shut it and punched him in the chest, though not hard, and stalked past him to go put her polar clothing on.   
He sighed again and turned to go prepare as well. 


	8. Chapter 8

  
“I swear to gott, it’s like something out of Star Wars,” Schuldig commented as they jolted along in the reticulated combination of tank, train and SUV called a Haaglund by the brand name. Unlike the standard high vis red the extreme terrain vehicle was normally painted polar regions, Esset had coated theirs in mottled white. Everything was white, camouflage in the frozen wastes, and though the seating had been changed around, there had been no consideration for their bones not being jarred loose from every joint. “Except instead of walkers we have mechs. Which are walking,” he added with a little self conscious sideways nod.  
The two Japanese heavy armored exo-suits, fifteen feet tall when fully extended, were positioned in front and back of the column, the better to sort out hidden crevices and recover from any disaster that occurred. They looked interestingly mundane in this landscape, hiking along with custom made walking poles as well as their ground penetrating sensors to test the ice with. Probably because there was nothing else for miles human made to compare them to in proportion, they simply looked like armored people walking with snow mobiles and sleds, rather than a convoy of giants and vehicles. There were six Haaglunds and between them were six large flat bed trailers with high railings, normally seen to carry supplies and enormous diesel fuel bladders out to the various international stations. In this case, the trailers were loaded up with tented in equipment and supplies, as the Haaglunds only took seven people in front and ten in the back cabin if they didn’t mind giving up personal space. The passenger seats in the front cabin, normally lined up as in a normal SUV, had been taken out and bolted in along the sides, as in the back cabin, allowing the long trip to be faced with conversation and a very little assembled table.  
“Let’s hope that all anyone can see from space is the white on white,” Yuuji said. It had taken days to get everything off the ship and onto the ice, and not even real night to conceal them at this time of year. Plenty of time for someone to notice something odd was going on by satellite.  
“Or that they will believe the ship is anchored where it is because of engine trouble, or what ever lies the Captain has been prepared to tell nosy parties,” Brad said.  
Yuuji smirked. “He can blame it on Google maps, you know how that goes. ‘Honestly, we were just following the online directions’.”  
“What the hell are we doing here anyway?” Schuldig asked. “I remember nothing in my job description saying anything about freezing my butt off in Antarctica. I went to Siberia, in Winter; is that not enough? We could be on the boat, drinking coffee and eating pie, but no, we are out here, looking for some stupid military base.”  
“Is your butt actually even cold?” Chieko asked him seriously.  
“Well, not at the moment, no. But it’s going to happen sooner or later,” Schuldig countered.  
“Then complain later, when it happens! If it’s truly psychologically important to you, I promise, I will personally dump a load of snow down the back of your pants to ensure you have a good reason to complain!” Chieko threatened.  
The heater was on in the cabin of the vehicle and the temperature was reasonably okay. The idea was not to roast everyone in their thermals and insulated clothing, but to maintain the lowest temperature of comfort to counter the shock of stepping out into deep sub zero. If they went from very cozy hot to freezing cold, they would be in more trouble of just shutting down, starting with getting very sleepy very fast.  
“It’s going to be a long trip, and we’re fortunate to be able to ride, rather than push some dog sled or trudge most of the way on foot,” Brad said as calmly as possible. “Complaining isn’t going to make it go any faster. In fact, it’s been proven complaining makes things go slower. So stop it.”  
Schuldig sulked.  
Aya thought he sometimes missed Weiss, when all he had to do to get some peace and quiet was yell at Ken and go to his room and slam the door. The view outside the windows was interesting. Miles and miles of snow, and mountains. Mountains of snow? Of ice? And yes, why were they here? If there was a base, maybe Naoe could open the doors frozen in the ice or something, and Yuuji’s parents were mission leaders, but what could the rest of them do?  
And this went on for hours.  
Which turned into a day.  
Camping on the frozen wasteland, even with insulated tents and heaters, and the fact that the sun stayed ‘up’ so that only their watches said ‘night’, was not fun. Packing up in the morning, and getting back on the ‘road’ was a draining pain in the ass, because the cold and the snow and the thin air were taking all their body energy to fight, despite the precautions to keep warm at as level a temperature as possible.  
“It’s Winter in Hell,” Schuldig stated three days later, not happy to be dragged (literally) out of his nice warm sleeping bag. He had wanted to quit shaving out of increasing laziness, but Brad had informed him he would only have something to catch the moisture of his breath and freeze it in, thus giving his chin frostbite. And told him he looked like an orangutan.  
“Oh for…I’m going to wring your neck if you say one more thing. Now play cards,” Yuuji threatened.  
Schuldig sighed and considered his hand, then folded and gave up. “I quit. I’m going to close my eyes and sleep and if I fall on the floor, then so be it.” He made sure he was strapped in to the seat anyway, and tried to get comfortable.  
“Too bad; he was going to win that hand,” Brad folded his with a sigh, and gathered the cards from the rest of them to shuffle and deal.  
“I hate you,” Schuldig said, eyes still closed.  
There was a world ending crack-boom and the Haaglund suddenly shifted ominously to the right side. The engine labored as the right track failed to find purchase.  
“Fucking shit, didn’t you see that coming!” Yuuji demanded of Brad who was now sitting wide eyed.  
A flash of amber gold crossed the precog’s eyes as he checked the situation. The carrier righted itself and stopped. “Nothing life threatening,” he said, but he was irked at having slacked. “Probably why I didn’t get a warning.”  
Ishida picked up the mic and called the other units behind them to let them know the situation. After a few minutes he got the carrier shifted to a level position and they were progressing again. “You’d better pay attention back there,” he said in what sounded like patience forced through clenched teeth.  
Schuldig was glaring at Brad, but then he settled down to try to relax and sleep again. “Maybe you should be looking, no?”  
Brad hated to admit it but yes, he should be looking. “Advice taken,” he said with ever so slightly a hint of remorse. Yuuji wasn’t happy with him either.  
“Nor is the driver,” Schuldig added aloud to the thought.  
“Alright, alright, I’m looking,” Brad said, handing the cards over to Yuuji in resignation. It was going to be a very long trip. “But you’re forgetting Fujimiya.”  
Yuuji looked at his ‘demon’ lover. Knowing Aya, he’d probably be the only one to climb out of a crevasse and be rescued, he grumbled internally.  
“Don’t look at me like that,” Aya shifted his cards around. “You’re getting very cranky from being cooped up, but don’t blame me for this,” he returned the sour look.  
Yuuji frowned and decided that while Aya was right, he was still annoyed with him, just because.  
“Yuu-chan,” his mother said in that mom-warning voice. “Pull yourself together before I throw you out in the snow to cool off.”  
“Hah,” Yuuji retorted. “It’s been a long time since you were able to pick me up by the waist band of my pants, Mum.”  
“Naoe, would you please?” she looked over her cards at Nagi.  
Nagi grinned at Yuuji. “She outranks me.” The door latch popped, the door opening just a bit.  
“Don’t you dare!” Brad ordered.  
Nagi shut the door, but the blast of cold air at least freshened things up. Schuldig scowled. “You people are getting stir crazy.”  
“Cabin fever,” Chieko said. “It’s the technical term. I may have to get the needles out and sedate you all, ass first.”  
This put an end to the arguments. For at least a few hours. 

@ @ @

Days later, and only a few near death experiences (mostly at the hands of fellow team members) the cadre pulled up to a halt where the old map coordinates indicated the base had been established.  
Unfortunately, it looked just like the rest of Antarctica.  
Ice and snow crusted, rocky, forbidding mountains, check. Howling wind, check. Drifts of deep snow, check. Glacier, check.  
Everyone just stood staring around like lost sheep. Or would it be lost penguins? Scientists, engineers, adjunct military. It was one of those, ‘Well, we are here, now what?’ moments.  
After some more minutes of just staring around, and turning in circles to do so, Nagi pulled out his tablet and biting his ski mitten to pull the fold off his fingertips, taped the screen. He studied it for a moment. People shuffled their feet and smacked their hands together and looked at each other. More staring. The snow was starting to really get to everyone. Even the most ardent cross country skiers were like; Never. Again.  
“It’s got to be around here somewhere,” Nagi looked around. He pointed. “Mountain,” he pointed again, “Glacier. Gap.” He finally looked at Brad. “Well? Did we find it?”  
“It doesn’t work that way,” Brad said gently, but firmly. “We have to make an effort to find it before we can find it, and I can ‘see’ us finding it.”  
Nagi gave him a sour face, then put the tablet away and the mitten flap back over his freezing fingers. “You outrank me, yell at them to start searching for something.”  
“Start searching for something!” Brad yelled at the depth of his lungs.  
Nagi looked amused and annoyed at the same time.  
“It’s down here,” Schuldig called mildly from where he had wondered over to a pile of snow that had drifted into a cleft in the rocks.  
“What?” Nagi said in disbelief, turning to look at him. Once again the damned red head had taken all the drama out of his—drama.  
Schuldig pointed at the snow and rocks, his face pale with the cold. “I hear brains. There are people down there.”  
“’I hear brains’,” Ishida repeated drolly, standing next to Brad now. “I do hope that line isn’t going in the history books,” he looked at him.  
“You two, dig it out,” Brad pointed to the cleft, looking at the two mechs.  
“For someone who doesn’t want to be in charge, you’re doing a good job of it,” Ishida said, not at all concerned.  
Brad gave him an irritated look, the irritation more for himself. He was too used to being in charge. Plus, he wanted this over with. As quickly as possible. He was thinking the Mediterranean. A smallish, well fortified island, with a net of mines in the water all around it.  
After a hour, the two mechs stepped back from where they had chiseled up and pulled out huge blocks of ice. They were careful not to step on anyone, as the mission crew of about sixty people had crowded around in rubber necking curiosity. A construction suspiciously like the conning tower of a submarine was buried in the ice in the crevice. A nice, big proprietary swastika was embossed in the metal hatch over the round locking mechanism, in case anyone had any questions.  
It looked very ominous, just being there. The wind howled a bit for emphasis and a drift of snow settled back in at its base.  
“People,” Chieko said in some awe, barely recognizable from the others in her snow goggles, ski mask, and fur framed hood. It had finally hit her. “Living people, after all this time.”  
“Whooo-hooo!” Nagi jumped up and down in a circle again, waving his arms in the air. “We found it, we found it! We found it!”  
This lead to a very undisciplined cheering from the rest of the crowd that got on Brad’s last nerve. He took out his gun, with some difficulty, because he had to remove his glove first, and fired into the air. “Enough!” he bellowed over the echoing crack. “You,” he pointed to a mech wearer. “Knock on the door.”  
The head tilted on the big body suit, then the mech driver bent the machine to tap lightly on the door with the tip of a manipulating claw. The sound reverberated like a gong out over the frozen landscape.  
“They had to have heard that,” Aya commented. He was hopping from foot to foot, trying to keep his circulation going.  
“Yeah, that started a real panic,” Schuldig giggled. “Like boiling oil on ants.”  
“Are they sane?” Brad asked him sharply. Perhaps they had devolved into cannibals or something down there. The adults wiped out by disease and the children gone feral? Worse yet, the men all died out and the women taken over, he thought grimly.  
“Seems so,” Schuldig said after a moment. “Just pissing themselves over the door being found. They think it’s the Americans. Should I….?” he looked at Brad, tapping his temple.  
“Gods, no,” Brad said. “You’ll terrify them even more.”  
“Well, that was the point,” Schuldig admitted with absolute honesty.  
“Again,” Brad ordered with a gesture.  
The mech driver tapped again, a little more gently this time, but it still bonged very loudly.  
Schuldig stuck his hands in the well padded jacket’s armpits and sighed out a cloud of steamy breath in the freezing air. A few more minutes passed. “They’re not home, let’s go.” He turned away as if to walk back to the Haaglunds.  
“Don’t be an ass,” Brad stated. He turned to the mechs again. “For godsakes, rip it off of there. We’re the god damned SS. Doors don’t stop us.”  
As the mech’s tripartite claw reached for the screw lock mechanism, the wheel started to turn. The hatch opened very slowly and the air cooled perforated barrel of an old style automatic rifle poked out. “Who are you!” a rough voice barked in German.  
“Nazi-gram from Heinrich Himmler!” Schuldig said brightly, leaning over to peek in at the man. Then he took the barrel of the old MG-38 and pulled it gently away as the man stood there blank face, gob-smacked by Schuldig’s mind control.

@ @ @ 

“Lead us to the main part of the base,” Schuldig told the man.  
The two mechs and half the military contingent were left outside to guard the Haaglunds and equipment. The Japanese engineers were grouped in the middle, with the Talented in the front and the rest of the military troops in the back. They followed the man down a narrow rough hewn corridor in the rock. In places, the tunnel was reinforced with concrete bracing one could still see the imprint of the retaining wood on from when it was poured. The lighting was old fashioned with wire cages on it, the bulbs only slightly yellowed by time.  
“He can’t be more than thirty,” Chieko said quietly. “Some signs of malnutrition, but where are they getting the sunlight and supplements to stay as healthy as he is?”  
“Would you like me to ask?” Schuldig said.  
“I think I need to question them myself,” she said. “So many questions. Just keep us from getting killed.”  
“Remember this is a military action until further notice,” Ishida said. “No unnecessary chatter.”  
“Okaaaay, creeeeepy,” Schuldig said as they came out into a wider tunnel that was framed in walls of ice.  
Frozen under the sheets of ice, as if on display—were human bodies.  
Standing up in uniforms decorated with medals and rank, hats on, eyes closed, the men were on one side, women neatly dressed in left over military or dull civilian on the other.  
“It’s a cemetery,” Schuldig whispered, having got the information from the man whose mind he had by the brain. “They bury them in the ice.”  
“No children,” Chieko murmured after examination. “I suppose that is a good sign.”  
“Either that or children are tender and tasty,” Nagi muttered disparagingly.  
“No,” Schuldig said, drawing on information from the man’s mind, “They are not cannibals. Apparently the children are very healthy. These are the older generation, and the aged, see?” he pointed to the bodies on the end of the row. Through the mildly opaque ice, one could barely make out that the person inside was indeed elderly.  
The passageway opened into a room part cave, part walls, where three more doors were framed in the walls. All four doors had more of the submarine-like hatch locks. Only one was open.  
“How did they hear us knocking?” Nagi asked Schuldig.  
“The air vents. It really echoed.” There were little gusts of cold fresh air in the passages, but the temperature itself was warm enough.  
Ishida was suspicious. “So they sent only one man to answer the door?”  
“Ah, but you see, he’s going to lead us into a chamber where we’ll end up dead in a sneakingly horrific manner, aren’t you my new found friend?” Schuldig asked the man, with a friendly pat on the shoulder.  
He nodded, blank eyed.  
“Hmm,” Ishida noised archly. “Could we instead go the other way?”  
Schuldig grinned, and looked at the man, who went to one of the other hatches and grasping the wheel, spun and opened it. Schuldig bowed and held out an arm comically, like an old style magician comedian.  
This way was wide and high enough to feel more like a hall way than a tunnel in the rock. It lead quite a ways in, to another hatch type door, which then opened into a large cavern. Ishida and the others crowded to peek out through the doorway, Schuldig keeping the man in front of them.  
As impossible as it was, through this relatively simple and unimpressive doorway, there it was.  
A vast cavern. The central roof seemed composed of clear ice, allowing the thin arctic light to seep in. Where the ceiling was not this strange arrangement, there were electric lights suspended from scaffolding bolted into the rock. Along one side of the cavern, a wall of rock and steel plates banked something that gave off waves of heat, and the smell of molten rock like a forge or iron smelting plant pervaded the cavern. In one area sectioned off, big enough to be the deck of an aircraft carrier, nine suspiciously familiar looking concave disk shaped craft rested, each on four sets of airplane double wheels. Almost all of them had open surface plates and wires hanging down from their bellies like strange jellyfish, and were roughly patched in places.  
“Looks like your surmise was correct,” Brad said to Ishida. “They’ve run out of parts to repair the remaining working few with. Thus the abductions stopped. Schuldig, you can release him now.”  
The man startled and turned to stare at them in shock. “Vas…”  
“Okay, UFO guy, take us to your leader,” Schuldig said in German.  
“Who are you people!” he demanded angrily.  
Brad sighed and unsnapped his snow jacket, pulling down the zipper. It was quite warm in here, and now was as good a time as any.  
The man’s eyes widened as he saw the night black, freshly tailored wool tunic with its silver insignia, the white and red rose collar patch of the Rosencruz Stadarten he did not recognize, but the rest was obvious. He stepped back and raised his arm stiffly. “Hail Hitler, Herr Oberstleutnant!”  
Brad sketched him a half salute from the elbow in return, wondering if people were ever going to stop doing that. “Do you mind, it’s rather crowded in here,” he turned on the professional charm, but made it very clear he was not happy.

@ @ @

“Now we shoot them all, eh?” Schuldig murmured to Brad in Japanese.  
“No,” Brad said sternly, not looking at him. “Stop your nonsense.”  
Every man woman and child in the place was lined up neatly in a central open space. The ‘base’ was now the equivalent of a small town butted up against the rural. A section of the cavern was given over to pueblo like concrete and rock apartment buildings, that went as high as they could where they could. Between the aircraft and the apartments was a section where now fully mature trees grew as well as crops and from what they could see and hear, pigs and cows, goats, sheep. The place was very---smelly, but not in a totally unpleasant way, just a little too ‘earthy’ for modern noses, the ‘night soil’ being used on the crops and the ‘grey water’ recycled to water them. The molten smell of what turned out to be a lava stream toned it all down somehow.  
In front of the farm area and were a forge, a number of looms for waving fabric, and some animal skins stretched out to make leather from them.  
The majority light haired, light eye’d population looked in bold curiosity at the people who had come to their little hiding place. “Ouslanders,” was the word that came most out of the murmurs and whispers. Outsiders and foreigners, wearing the uniforms of their ancestors.  
Their leaders were suspicious. The one who had come to the hatch to the outside was apparently a junior member in this group. An older man with white hair and the well worn and cared for but thin uniform of an Obersturmbanfuhrur come forward, walking perfectly upright, but with a cane to support him, a grim look on his face. “Elfric Hanshel,” he introduced himself to Brad. “Elder of this place. And you are?”  
“Crawford,” Brad stated and stepped aside. “Grupenfuhrur Ishida Sarazawa is in charge of this recovery mission.  
The old man looked over Ishida, who stood as tall as him at six feet. The Esset contingent had piled their arctic wear on a convenient empty wagon in this ‘town square’. “You are Asian,” he stated. “Japanese.”  
“Swiss, actually,” Ishida said. “But yes, ethnically, Japanese. We are reclaiming this base under orders of the SS Reichsfuhrer. I suggest you cooperate.”  
“Swiss?” the man said. Apparently at his age, everything was a statement. “Does Germany no longer exist,” he addressed Crawford again.  
“Not truly, no,” Ishida said calmly, ignoring the disrespect. After all, under the black wool, he was a cop and a military cop at that. He knew who was in charge in the end. “But that is all for later. For now, I require your people to submit to full medical inspection, and anyone of you who still has knowledge of these---fliegenden schieben—will co-ordinate with our engineers to see about getting them either up and running or the most intact one broken down for transfer to headquarters.”  
The old man’s chin went up a little, as if to give his washed pale old blue eyes more focus. “What proof have you?” he asked carefully. “That you are who you say you are. We know that Germany lost the war. That the Jews have pursued us to the ends of the Earth. Why should we believe you?”  
“Germany lost the second, but the SS won the third,” was Ishida’s response. “The corruption those people were so proud of spreading came home to roost. Now they cower in their ‘homeland’ and wait for their god to save them from a world gone sane and intolerant of their degradation of the rest of humanity for the profit of their self proclaimed ‘god’s chosen race’. I have no proof, other that we are here.”  
“If you will, Herr Grupenfuhrur,” Nagi stepped forward, and from his satchel carefully drew out a plastic folder containing an old and stained file folder. “Herr Hanschel, will this help?” He slipped out the old folder from the new and proffered it in both hands, eyes down.  
The old man looked at it, then after some careful thought, took it and looked at it carefully, before opening it and looking through the papers. “Where did you find this?” he demanded, glaring at Nagi.  
“In a bundle of papers sent via dog drawn wagon before the fall of Berlin,” Nagi stated. “We have been documenting and archiving many such bundles hidden away at the Rosencruz NAPOLA in an old bomb shelter. Granted, they should have destroyed them, but someone had the foresight to just bury them and run,” he added ruefully.  
/He wonders where a Japanese boy learned such good and precise German,/ Schuldig informed Brad at a mental prod. /He’s been raised to be cautious, like all the rest. They might as well be Rosencruz themselves. Paranoid, suspicious bastards, every one./ he grinned at Brad. /Let’s mess with them./  
/Don’t get yourself over excited,/ Brad warned at the wild look in the telepath’s eyes. /Step behind me and put your hand on my back./  
/But—what if someone…no, you are looking,/ came the self deprecating reply, and he obeyed. The clatter of worry and curiosity, along with some outright hostility faded from his mind in a few moments of the centered silence.  
“That still does not explain why the Japanese are in control of a supposedly German mission!” the old man thrust the fragile papers back at Nagi angrily.  
Nagi took them, catching one before it fell, and carefully put them back in their plastic case.  
Brad drew in a deep breath and Schuldig felt him click into a sort of gear, the familiar one of ‘lets get this over with’ before the shooting started. He drew out his gun and pointed it. “Does this help your thinking?” he growled in very precise German himself. “Men, guard the prisoners!” he snapped the order. “The SS is reclaiming this base for the Brotherhood, under the orders of the Reichsfuhrer!”  
The small number of soldiers that had come down with the scientists and engineers stepped forward with their Heckler and Koch automatic rifles aimed from the shoulder in almost eerily matched movement with the precision well drilled SS troops were known for through near a century. Like robots, it had always been a creepy method of intimidating their enemies and still worked well; the unison clack of a dozen pairs of metal reinforced boot heels like the cocking of guns, cold focused eyes under campaign cap brims.  
The elder looked at Crawford, then his eyes flicked to the soldiers. His mouth moved to a sulky frown. “I suppose you have made your point,” he said glumly.  
“Doctor, you wish to do physical examinations, you may begin,” Crawford said, not calling off the soldiers. “Stabsfeldwebel, you’re in charge of the flying saucers,” he said to Nagi. “Herr Gruppenfuhrur, your permission to step aside and get on with the work,” he said to Ishida.  
“Granted,” Ishida said, looking at the old man as he said so. “Now, shall I order our men to stand down or would you like to continue the argument?”  
/I doubt that will cure the old goat’s ‘nazi-er than thou’ attitude,/ Schuldig commented to Brad.  
All he got in return was a sub-vocal snarl.  
/Well, at least my little butt is not freezing,/ Schuldig added. 


	9. Chapter 9

  
“The Americans are getting nosy,” Herr Greifeldt said after looking over the communications she had laid on his desk.  
“Not to worry, Herr Reichsfuhrer,” Frau Traugott said pleasantly, standing there at parade rest in her grey skirt and tidy white blouse. “By the time they make up their minds whether or not to be aggressive, it will be too late to pitch a fuss on their part.”  
He looked at her. Anyone who didn’t know her would think she was just a neutrally attractive, over officious administrative assistant. “I take it you’re up to something,” he said rather grimly.  
She smiled delightedly. “Why is it you monkeys are always so dismayed by change?”  
“Really, Fraulien, you claim balance is your goal, but then you throw us off balance and think it’s funny,” he grumbled a little, grateful for her sense of humor, because he still had his doubts about her capacity for—well--violence. For the most part she let them get on with their lives, but then along came one of her little ‘adjustments’, and the council, over cautious since the rule of the Elders, had to suck it up and deal.  
“You should have been there during the melting of the Bering Strait,” she said. “That was hysterical.”  
He’d read the report young Naoe had come up with regarding Frau Traugott. From what he had gathered, this being had been part of the ‘Kami’ of the Mephisto Hospital building itself, back when it was originally the Tokyo Municipal building. For years, this entity had been content to be ‘helpful’ in the processes of the city, and thus, the government of Japan, garnering a sort of general good will of thought and national pride from the populace. However after the quake, the building and therefore its purpose, had been abandoned. The quake had done something to stir up the kami, the native ‘spirits of place’, something had brought them to the foreground of activity again.  
Empty and alone, the ‘building’, or the kami, starved of that understated worship, had gone ‘grudge’ and started to eat people who so much as stepped into its shadow at a certain time of day. Most of this was rumor and hearsay, Naoe had written. But in the long run, turning the building into a hospital had given a purpose back to the being, which then manifested itself as a major part of the nursing staff. And maybe ‘she’ was still a little tiny bit crazy from that time?  
He thought about his next words very carefully. He didn’t want to push her one way or the other, as he could not read her with his Talent for empathy, but it had to be said. “The report from Sarazawa Ishida indicates that life in the base is becoming un-sustainable. The council is considering stripping it and relocating the populace.”  
“That won’t be necessary,” she said gently.  
“But maintaining it would mean shipping large quantities of supplies, equipment, supplements, personnel, even soil,” he pushed a print out across the desk.  
She picked the paper up and took her lightly tinted wire framed glasses off to look it over. Her pale silver blue eyes were like reflective mirrors, he noted as she perused the text. “It is, however, feasible,” she laid the paper back down again and returned the glasses to their place, reducing the effect of her alien eyes enough to fool most people.  
“Frau Traugott, I’m going to have to ask you to explain your position to the Council,” he said wearily. “As you are aware, we are still recuperating from a very expensive war. Our best move at the moment would be to conserve our finances and our energies. We have obligations to fulfill to maintain international good will….”  
“Pfft, finances,” she said, with a flip of her hand, like a nanny rejecting the idea of cake as a food. “No, Herr Reichsfuhrer, you would do well to plan on re-enforcing the base.” There was an undertone of finality there that struck bedrock. No cake and early bed time as well.  
“W—h—y?” he said slowly, wondering what exactly happened to those people that had gotten eaten. Holzeweber was obviously never going to recover from his little brush with her temper. He did not want to end up sitting in a rocking chair staring at the horizon or where ever else a kindly nurse pointed him.  
“You’ll see,” she smiled brightly. She leaned forward to look him in the eyes and patted her hand on the desk playfully. “It’s a surprise.”  
He sighed. Crawford had a lot to answer for. 

@ @ @

“How do these things even fly?” Brad asked Nagi, who was over seeing the dismantling of one of the more intact ‘saucers’. Basically, standing around and watching while everyone else worked.  
“Surprisingly, it’s a lot to do with maglev,” Nagi said. “From what I understand, the rim spins on that edge frame work, creating an updraft, like a hydroplane, but more powerful, and once at altitude, the jets are angled in to maneuver them. It takes very little fuel that way, because once you have the rim spinning, the magnetics create more power, and the airflow keep it so….”  
“So what was the problem?” Brad cut him off, giving him the ‘get to the point’ look.  
“The controls. The equipment of the time was not up to assisting the fine motor controls needed. You know how some rich idiot buys a Ferrari or Pininfarina and in 20 minutes after getting in the driver seat, cracks the thing up on a light pole? No experience controlling anything at 200 plus per hour. Except with a car, you can keep your foot light on the gas. With these things, you just have to be really damned fast in your reaction times. Which would explain the erratic movement patterns people have witnessed,” Nagi looked at him seriously. “It’s like the Bell. They were coming up with stuff faster than they could adapt equipment to the physics of it. Look up how many experimental jets were cracked up before they managed to tone things down and find a way to keep the pilots from blacking out.”  
“I get the idea,” Brad said. “I’m assuming the controls that allow the mechs to run smoothly are going to be adapted to the saucers?”  
“Something like that,” Nagi said. “The similarity with the mechs is that a mech driver has to be trained to move very deliberately. They can move at speed, they just have to have the self awareness of a ballet dancer or martial artist and instinctively move on all four planes.”  
“Or a gymnast,” Brad looked around for Yuuji, not spotting him anywhere in the vicinity. “Where did Yuuji get to, anyway?”  
“I think his ‘mommy’ commandeered him to help with the physicals,” Nagi smirked.  
Brad studied the young man for a moment, wondering what Nagi’s problem with Sarazawa was.  
“Crawford!” Sarazawa Ishida called sharply. “We need you topside. Scan for any sign of Ami interference.”  
“And here we go,” Brad sighed. “I think they can handle this with out you. I may need some muscle up there.”  
Nagi laughed curtly. “Sure, make the skinny kid do it.”  
“Not so skinny any more,” Brad gave him a light punch on the upper arm. 

@ @ @

They’d been up on the ice amid the drifts of snow building up on the Haaglunds and sleds for more than an hour when Brad felt it coming, a mild personal threat, and then ‘saw’ it. “Nagi, to your ten, three fighter jets. I don’t see them dropping anything, just recon, but let’s shake them up a bit. Make them wonder what we’ve got to push them off with.”  
Nagi looked up and steeled himself. He’d never done something like this with something so big and fast before. He’d done the theoretical exercises, but never actually done it. That Brad trusted him to be capable of it was par for the course, but he was still a little bit shaken by the idea. On the other hand, what a challenge!  
He quickly calculated the estimated speed and weight of the jets. Definitely more than a car. He settled on what had to be the safest way to deflect them and leave them alive to talk about it. “Hell of a reach.”  
“They’ll come in low,” Brad said, his voice level and confident, no signs of stress. “Looking for a visual confirmation. If you miss them the first time, they’ll make a few more passes, so take your time.”  
If he missed them the first time. Precogs. Nagi drew a deep breath and focused his mind, hearing the velocity rip before he saw the jets appear as black dots over the glacial cragged mid-continental mountain range. He concentrated on a slant shape, imagining a glass slide, at a shallow incline that would catch them, grow, tilt and sling them up and around 35 degrees off to one side, well with in the normal flying capabilities of the planes. The initial impact on his power construct knocked him on his ass and slid him across the snow until it piled up and stopped him, but he managed to keep his focus. The jets were roughly diverted as planned, sending the last one into the curve spinning dangerously, the effects of which were evident in the distant crash and plume of black smoke.  
“Oops,” Nagi fell back the rest of the way back in the snow with a whuff of exhalation and a laugh.  
“Lousy pilot,” was Brad’s opinion. “Well, now they’ll call that an act of aggression.” He walked over to look down at Nagi, who was half hidden in a tunnel of white. “Are you alright?”  
“A little winded.” He laid there for a moment more, still laughing, then propped himself up on his elbow, shoving the over hanging snow out of the way. “I don’t think I’ll be doing that often and just for the fun of it,” he grinned widely up at Brad. “But damn!”  
Brad looked at the distant column of oily black smoke and frowned worriedly. “I think it’s time.” He reached a hand down to help Nagi up.  
Nagi realized as he took it and pulled himself into a better position to get up, that that was one of the many things he liked about his ‘mentor’. Brad had always treated him like a normal human being, even when he had been a disfigured little monster, even with his telekinesis. 

@ @ @

“Me? Why do I have to do this!” Schuldig asked, his voice pitched a bit high in panic, his eyes wide with surprise.  
They were in the cavern, and the words echoed a little, but no one paid much attention. For the most part, people were taken up with the impromptu physicals, the noisy dismantling of the saucers, and those who were not involved (or conscripted) went on to their usual daily tasks, which included a blacksmith’s hammer ringing. The base functioned as a small rural community, and really, if it were not for the growing lack of certain vitamins and minerals obtainable only through life on the surface, and the lack of additional genetic input every generation since the last saucer quit working, the settlement might have continued to do so. As it was, they were having to admit they were well and truly trapped if they did not cooperate with the Brotherhood.  
There was also some signs the younger people, as usual, did not agree with their elders’ world view. Like any small town, they wanted out. Those who could get away with leaving chores followed the newcomers about.  
“You’re the one best suited to determining the mind set of some of these women,” Brad said. “And you picked the last one.”  
“Why does it have to be another woman?” Yuuji asked curiously.  
“Because this particular kami is female,” Brad said in annoyance. “I asked, she told me. If we choose a man, she’ll just castrate him.”  
“Ouch, he said that word,” Yuuji winced.  
“Castrate?” Aya looked at him with evilly narrowed eyes.  
Yuuji gave his nemesis boyfriend a dirty look.  
“It still doesn’t seem fair,” Schuldig pouted a bit. “Just because I thought it was funny the first time, doesn’t mean it’s going to be the same thing again.”  
“Just. Do. It.” Brad stated between clenched teeth.  
The red head shrank back a little. Sometimes Brad could be very scary. “But this is so—rural,” he looked around. “I mean, really, milk maids, goose girls and weavers? Frau Traugott, Nurse, is—well, she’s sort of—more what you would call ‘a modern feminist’?” he winced.  
“Are you being sexist?” Yuuji was unable to avoid the opportunity to tease him (as well as try to defuse what looked like the growing incendiary of Brad’s temper).  
Tiffany blue eyes glared into hazel green, “I’m sorry, how many women did you use and toss aside?”  
Yuuji’s cheeks turned red, and he got angry. “I was brainwashed, you sadistic telepath.”  
At his side, Aya half frowned, half pouted, arms crossed. “Well, you did,” he said quietly.  
Yuuji made a t-shape with his hands, “Time out. That’s a foul and you know it. Stop trying to weasel out of orders.”  
Schuldig sighed out a deep breath. “Seriously, a lot of complicated technical factors went into choosing Traugott. She was being very loudly drunk and angry, and making my head hurt. These girls are like…well, let’s just say, they follow the party line. “Yes, sir”, “no sir”, “Have a baby, sir”. Even Martz’s little hottie has more spirit than these madchen.”  
“Martz’s wife is a ‘hottie’?” Brad inquired very, very dangerously.  
The redhead took both a mental and physical step back this time. “I mean the way he thinks about her and she behaves--what do you take me for? Some sort of pervert who makes eyes at other men’s wives?” he demanded, outraged.  
“You did ask him if he had any photos of her in her panties,” Yuuji reminded him.  
“I was teasing him! That was just fun,” Schuldig protested, glancing about and trying to be quiet. “You do it then! You know more about various women’s panties than I do!”  
“He’s right,” Brad looked at Yuuji. “Sylvia didn’t wear them.” He added dryly.  
Yuuji looked at Brad. “Really?” he stated flatly. Now both he and Schuldig were glaring at Brad.  
“Except for the fact that you have quite a few I’ve actually caught you wearing,” Brad turned back to Schuldig in a blatant evasion of that conversation.  
Schuldig pouted. “Well, they don’t make sexy lace bikinis for men,” he said sullenly. “And you never complained. In fact you found those Victoria Secret ones quite exciting. Before you ruined them.” He added the last a little angrily.  
“TMI,” Fujimiya warned.  
“Said Mr. Sparkly Purple Thong,” Schuldig rolled his eyes at the hypocrisy.  
Aya turned red.  
“Enough!” Brad raised his voice, causing a number of people to finally turn and look over at them. “Find a damned host for this thing before the whole world shows up with stealth bombers and snow cats, and this turns into some sort of ridiculous Clive Cussler go-round!”  
Schuldig sighed again and while still in protest mode, turned to look around. “Mein gott, they all have babies, I can’t pick a woman who has children to care for.”  
“Post menopause, then,” Brad said, not really caring. “What has age got to do with it?”  
“Well…” Schuldig started to squirm again.  
“Age-ist,” Yuuji commented.  
“’No women under eighteen’,” Aya said bitterly, glaring at Yuuji.  
“What the hell did I do now?” the blond protested. (Outside of the fact that someone had not had sex for days now, given the sleeping arrangements…)  
“Oh for crying out loud,” Brad complained, then looked around. “You! Stop what you’re doing and come here.” He ordered in Japanese, pointing to the nearest woman. She was one of the engineering crew working on a saucer.  
She frowned slightly at him. “Excuse me, but I’m a civilian,” she said carefully, noting his uniform and hugging her large tablet a little closer.  
“Doesn’t matter,” Brad said brusquely. “What is your name?”  
“Mizugami Rin,” she answered. “I have to….” She indicated the small team packing up the dismantled guts of a saucer.  
“Young, single, no children?” He looked at Schuldig, speaking German.  
Schuldig looked over the Japanese woman. “Well, she’s flat chested, but I supposed she’ll do.” He replied in the same.  
“What has her chest got to do with it?” Nagi asked quietly of Yuuji.  
Brad smiled down at her (she was all of five feet 3 inches tall) pleasantly in professional bon homie. “I would like a report on the saucers. Come, explain to us what exactly is being done here.”  
She looked perplexed and hesitated. “I think it would be better if you asked one of the senior--.”  
“I tried to be nice,” Brad said, his short supply of patience completely gone. “Schuldig, round her up and let’s get this over with.”

@ @ @

“I have to…the crates….No. Wait,” ‘Rin’ muttered, then put a hand to her head, shifting on the folding cot. They had put her in one of the hospital tents to recover.  
“How do you feel?” Brad asked, not sure at all if this had gone right or not.  He stood beside the cot, hands in slacks pockets, wondering if this was anywhere near a sane thing to be doing, letting another one of these things loose on the planet.    
“Short and flat chested,” the multiple layered voice chimed. “Very amusing, Crawford-san.” It did not sound amused.  
“Ah, so you’re in there. Good,” he said, for some reason, slightly relieved after all. “Can you do anything with this base?”  
“Can I have a moment to adjust myself,” she snapped at him, dark brown eyes angry. A silvery reflection flashed over them.  
“Ooo, someone’s cranky on waking,” Schuldig commented.  
“Tentacles,” Brad warned.  
Schuldig turned pale and fled the tent.  
Eyes closed again, the now kami infested young engineer sighed deeply, “If you had picked someone more familiar with the base, this would go more quickly. As it is, out,” she pointed to the tent’s door without opening her eyes or raising her head. 

@ @ @

“So?” Yuuji asked as Brad came out.  
“Seems to be working,” Brad said. “How is he?”  
Aya, who went into some sort of strange mindless trance when handed the little box, was sitting in a folding chair, hands laying on his thighs, still staring into the non-distance.  
“Alive,” Yuuji said.  
Brad looked at him curiously, then smiled ruefully. “Problems?”  
“We can play with all this fire,” Yuuji indicated the base, and by reference, the world, with a wave of his hand, “But we can’t go back to the way things were? The way they should have been?” he looked at Brad.  
“If you want to know what I think?” Brad responded, “I think that thing in him took you hostage. ‘Shouhou’,” he used the word for ‘direct retribution’ in reference to ‘karma’. He sighed deeply, looking around. “This is not the time to be thinking of your self. Anyway, as things go, it’s not all that bad,” he looked back at Yuuji again. “Who knows what would have happened if you had fought him off.”  
Schuldig walked over, his hands in the pockets of his uniform slacks, his uniform tunic unbuttoned. For a place buried in ice, it was rather warm in the base. Especially after they had spent days in the deep freeze getting here. “What’s with the bimbo?” he looked at Aya.  
“Good question,” Brad said. “See if he’s broken or something in there.” One could hope.  
Schuldig bent to snap his fingers in front of Aya’s face, waved a finger back and forth to check if his eyes were tracking, then gave him a sharp little slap.  
Aya blinked, then snarled, standing out of the chair so it fell back and grabbing for his hip, where the Katana was not.  
“He’s alive,” Schuldig announced the obvious, stepping back hastily.  
“You were out of it,” Yuuji expertly caught Aya by the shoulders before he could try to kill the other red head. “What happened?”  
Aya shook his head to get his mind working again. “I don’t know. Is it done?”  
“It’s done,” Brad said. “Yuuji, get him up topside and into some fresh air.”  
Yuuji gave him the wtf look of doom.  
Brad grinned at him. “Throw him into a snow bank or something, that should cool him off,” he said in French, which he knew Aya did not know.  
Aya glared at him, suspecting that evil grin.  
“And you think I’m over possessive,” Schuldig commented to Brad when the other two were out of hearing range.  
“And don’t think I don’t appreciate it,” Brad informed him, then turned to walk over to where the crew of engineers were still working on breaking down the saucers. Like ants at a picnic, they were quickly reducing it to packages that could be then carried up to the surface and piled onto the sleds. The tents and supplies they had brought with them would be also be reduced to what would get them back to the ship and the rest left behind for the people of Donitz’s ‘paradise’ until they could get back with more supplies.  
Ishida came over to stand beside him as he watched them wrench, drill and cut up the saucer they were working on. “Herr Greifeldt has ordered that the base be secured and held, rather than evacuated.”  
“I figured as much when Traugott sent the little box,” Brad said. “The transfer is complete. We’ll soon see what the new kami has to say about it all.”  
Ishida sighed. “One never thought to see the day when the ‘age of myth’ would return.”  
Crawford looked at him. “You have to admit, we were asking for it all along, weren’t we? All that blather about the old ways and the old gods? Wewelsburg and runes, the spear of destiny, and all that mystical crap.” He leaned over a little toward him, arms crossed.  
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Ishida asked wryly. “I just keep wondering; now what?”  
“I’m not sure I want to know,” Brad looked at the workers again. “What exactly is Esset going to do with ‘flying saucers’?”  
“I think the question is ‘what exactly are the Kami going to do with ‘flying saucers’?’,” Ishida looked up at the other huge disks sitting there.

 

 

 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

There wasn’t a lot to do other than stand around and look ‘official’ in their officer’s uniforms. Assigned to make sure nothing went wrong, and that if it did, it would be corrected immediately, Crawford was pretty much bored damned near senseless. Walking around in a vast circle, observing things, maybe checking a little into the future to make certain nothing was going to happen (he’d been sternly looked at by Sarazawa Ishida when ordered to maintain the status quo), he was trying to think of a way out of this whole thing.   
His phone beeped. He took it out and looked at it. An email had come through.  
“How is that even getting any service down here?” Yuuji, who had been walking the circuit with him, asked.  
“Repeater, top side. They’re setting this place up for the communications nets. Obviously it’s active now,” He opened the email and read it, then laughed curtly. “Well that’s just perfect.”  
Yuuji tried to read the tiny screen over his shoulder.   
Crawford turned his head a bit to look at him, an eyebrow arched.   
Yuuji looked back at him, all of a kiss away…  
“Will you stop?” Crawford warned.   
“It’s the uniform,” Yuuji purred, giving him the bedroom eyes. “It has to go.”  
“And you need to realize these people are an isolated tribe of old school prudes who can probably spot this sort of thing a mile away, so stop it,” Brad took one step aside, putting a little more distance between then without actually wanting to. “If you must know, Greifeldt is sending in Martz and family. Turns out that the ‘hottie’ (he said this sarcastically) has a teaching degree. And supposedly, Martz’s talent will help out in locating things that need to be fixed. Of which there are quite a lot,“ he sighed, looking around at the workers scurrying by with replacement parts and tool kits.   
“Actually, it’s not a bad talent,” Yuuji said thoughtfully. “And here I thought he was just a human lie detector.”  
“Some sort of cross between a precog and an empath. I wonder what Martz has done to deserve being dumped here?” Brad murmured, looking at the email again. “I’m assuming your father has gotten this one too.”  
“He should get all of them,” Yuuji said. “Herr Hanshel seems to be having some remaining territorial issues,” his eyes now on the group in the ‘town square’.  
“No doubt. He’s been responsible for this lot since he was old enough to take over,” Brad looked over at the old guy. Henshel was holding court with some of his cronies on benches that looked to have been set up ages ago by how well worn they were. All of the elderly men occasionally glared over at the Schwarz team members they could spot. Then again, it could just be a need for glasses at their age. “I’m pretty sure he’s had it drummed into his head to make this ‘paradise’ work, or destroy it and everyone’s off to Valhalla. This whole set up smacks of fanaticism. You’d have to be a nut to want to build an ‘oasis’ under a ton of ice.” Brad smiled wryly at Yuuji.   
Just then, the lights high up on the scaffolding flickered, then went out; then a moment later came back on again very brightly, causing a bout of murmuring among the population.   
“That wasn’t the engineers,” Brad said. “Traugott—I mean Mizugami—must be taking over.”  
There was an echoing boom and a roil of oily smoke rose into the air as one of the old generators went out, taking a good third of the aged lights with it. Then some woman started screaming bloody murder.  
“Well, there you go,” Yuuji breathed sardonically. He looked around as men ran to check the damage. “Anyone killed?” he asked Brad.  
“More noise than threat,” Brad said after a quick check, not really caring, and wondering where Schuldig had gotten to. He spotted him in the remaining dim light, hanging around a small pack of kids. Gods only knew what nonsense he was telling them about the outside world. On the other hand, he was probably getting information by the boatload. It never changed that adults forgot what little ears could pick up. “Hauptman Schulder, come here,” he ordered loudly across the open space.   
Schuldig looked up from where he was squatting to be at eye level with the kids. Then he formally excused himself with a little salute to the kids, stood up and ambled over, his expression one of ‘if you weren’t you, I’d shoot you’. If he had noticed the explosion, he didn’t seem to be at all concerned. But then, that was Schuldig, lost in his own little world.   
“What are you up to?” Brad asked mixing suspicion with trying to hide his amusement at his red headed devil.   
“Data mining,” Schuldig grinned. “You’d be surprised what dirt those angelic little buggers have come up with. Generator blew. No one is dead, but someone shit his pants,” he added with a giggle.  
“Surprise me,” Brad said dryly.   
Schuldig made his eyes as wide as they would go. “We are really aliens from Outer Space, who are going to make them all into sausages.”  
“Sausages?” Yuuji blurted in a half laugh.   
“Sausages,” Schuldig assured him. “And they are not to take any sweets any of us might give them, because they will be drugged for this sausage fest. Not that I want drugs in my sausage,” he added as an after thought. “When is lunch anyway?”   
“Did you actually find out anything of real interest?” Brad said, exasperated. He hated this mission, he hated this smelly place, he hated everything right now. He probably needed lunch, too, he considered.   
“Just a lot of randomly personal stuff about some of their elders,” Schuldig said. “But you never know what might come in handy for black mail, I mean, ‘intelligence enhanced co-operation’, later. Are the phones working?” he glanced at the one in Brad’s hand.   
“Seems like,” Brad put it away. “Why are they not in school or something?” he asked, thinking about Martz’s ‘hottie’. He wished he could get that line out of his head. The last thing he needed was his telepath going over the wall from all the raging heterosexuality down here. There were quite a few perfectly ripe young women who followed all of them (except the questionably pretty Fujimiya) with speculative eyes and ‘look, I have all my teeth’ smiles. Presumably the ‘village’ had not gotten so desperate yet as to institute polygamy. He didn’t like the fact that his lithe, slim and very healthy sex toy was obviously an ‘exotic luxury item’ down here.   
“Apparently it’s Sunday,” Schuldig said. “You know us Germans and our Sunday lock downs.”   
“I think Trau---I mean, Mizugami—is in the process of taking over.”   
“I was just coming to ask about that,” Dr. Sarazawa strode over to them, dressed in blue paper op-theater scrubs, looking a bit frazzled and having forgotten to take off a disgusting looking pair of nitrile gloves on hands she held up to keep from being contaminated any further. “I need lights in the medical tent now. I’ve got a woman in labor in there, and the baby has decided to be a stubborn little shi—, breach birth.” She scowled. “I’ve got to put a zipper in ASAP or she’s going to be screaming in my ears for hours while we try to do it the old fashioned way.”  
“Oh, just great, company comes, and someone has to show off by going into labor,” Schuldig rolled his eyes. “People.”  
Chieko looked at him as if he were sprouting tentacles of his own. “When was your last Psych evaluation?” she asked very carefully.  
“I think you gave me one on the way here,” he retorted, not happy. “Or was that a snowball enema?” He looked at Yuuji. “She’s your mother, do something about her,” he hissed.  
Yuuji held up his hands in surrender. “I’ll go see about the generator.”  
Chieko gave them all an evil look and stomped back to her field hospital.   
“If I ever get some horrible terminal disease, shoot me before that woman gets her hands on me,” Schuldig demanded of Brad. “And don’t let her have my brain. I don’t want to wake up in a jar with my eyeballs floating on the nerve stems in some god awful witches brew of ‘nutrients’.”   
“I promise I will cremate you and drink your ashes in my wine,” Brad said quite sincerely.  
Schuldig looked at him blankly for a few seconds, lips slightly parted. “That’s so romantic,” he said finally, deeply touched.   
It was Brad’s turn to roll his eyes. “Lunch time,” he stated firmly, taking his obviously low blood sugar lover by the arm and marching him off to the cafeteria tent. 

@ @ @

Schuldig looked down at his plate. On it was a pile of sausage. Sausage, canned lima beans and cabbage in a mild curry sauce. He sighed and stabbed a slice of sausage with his fork. “I see we’ve gone German/Asian fusion in honor of the ‘invasion’,” he muttered around a mouthful. “No wonder it stinks down here.”  
“I don’t care; I’m hungry,” Yuuji said, loading up his fork. “The blown generator is well and truly out, along with two others that died the final death a few weeks ago. I made sure they rewired the harness to the medical tents so Mum won’t late term abort me, but it looks like we got here just in time. Everything mechanical is suffering from the damp. They’ve been rubbing animal fat on everything, and trying to keep the air vents clear of ice, but the metal is just too fatigued. The hot springs keep the place warm, but they also keep the humidity up.   
Fujimiya looked up, pausing in his chewing, then swallowed. “Animal fat?”   
Everyone looked at him.   
He blushed. “Well, it’s just that—from what I remember, Kami don’t like that sort of thing. You don’t want blood or fat or parts of animal all over the place, unless it’s been specifically cooked as an offering. Priests have to go through a three day vegetarian cleansing diet before important ceremonies.”  
“In other words, Mizugami can’t work with it,” Brad dropped his fork onto his plate, annoyed.   
“Worse. The old machines are run on a combination of refined animal and plant oils,” Yuuji said. “More animal fat.”  
“Not good,” Schuldig worried. “So any minute now, boom, the whole place goes?”  
The lights flickered again just because Fate has a way of being an ass.   
“Maybe not,” Brad said, as the electricity held for as long as everyone had been holding their breath.   
And the lights went out again.   
A silvery twilight from the ‘ice skylight’ filtered down and that was about it.   
Yuuji glanced guiltily over at the medical tent, but apparently someone had brought down one of Esset’s own portable generators. It was very well lit up. He sighed in relief.   
“Some precog you are,” Schuldig sniped at Brad.  
Brad sighed and decided to finish his meal. 

@ @ @

Brad held the tent door open and glared at Fujimiya, who he had ordered to follow him.   
Aya glared right back, then knowing he was screwed, stepped in.   
Mizugami was wearing a white cotton kimono her host person had brought with as a beach robe. She looked pissed. “I’m starving,” she stated in that multi-voice weirdness.   
Aya swallowed and then bowed. “I’m sorry, um, Sensei?”   
“Sama,” she corrected him sharply.   
“I’m so very sorry, Kami-sama,” he said with even more contrition, bowing deeply. “But--.”  
“Food. Clean food. And hot water for a bath. And you will tell these people to be grateful I am here. Hostility goes both ways.” She added dangerously.   
“I’m—really not in any position of authority—Kami-sama,” Aya tried to protest.   
“Let’s get this straight,” she told him. “There is little here for me to draw on at this time and I have expended a lot of power. Either you feed me, or I get another shaman.”  
“Mizugami-sama,” Brad interrupted, doing his best to control the impending horror. “I’ve ordered the cook to make some rice, and we have frozen fresh fish caught in Hawaiian waters to grill. Will that be acceptable?”   
She was still looking at Fujimiya like she wanted to gut him. “For now.”  
“Forgive me for asking, but what's the real problem here?” Brad said.   
She focused her very dark eyes on him. “This so called paradise is going to take a lot more work than just letting me out of a little box! I am a modern entity, I require infrastructure, not pig pens!”  
Brad kept his face blank. What he wanted to do was either shoot her and start again; or less wasteful, turn her over his knee and spank her. Or better yet, order Sarazawa to. “Let’s start with calming down, shall we?” he said in his most reasonable ‘I’m going to kill you if you don’t’ voice. Next time, if there was ever a next time, he would make sure the candidate for godhood was dead drunk. It seemed to work better that way. “We have no idea how this normally works. Walk us through it.”  
“You get me a source of power, barring that; food. Barring food, I eat him!” she pointed at Fujimiya.   
Brad looked speculatively at Aya. Then he realized something. “Fujimiya, don’t just stand there gapping, worship her. Or do I have to do everything myself?”  
Aya looked shocked. He was still dealing with the ‘eat him’ part.   
“Count your fucking blessings, you moron,” Brad hissed at him.  
Aya looked at her, perplexed. “I—umm, I—thank you for watching over us, kami-sama.” He started to recover some of his upbringing. “Please look kindly on us.”  
“I’ll see to the power grid,” Brad told her. “Just be patient. And I wouldn’t advise consuming Fujimiya. He’d probably give you indigestion.”  
She huffed at him in annoyance, but it was too late, Brad was out the door. She returned her focus to Fujimiya. “Well?” she demanded.  
He bowed deeply again. “I’m so very sorry, Kami-sama, I’m not a trained priest, or even a shaman,” he blurted out. “I um—I,” he wracked his brains. “I’ll get you that food as soon as it’s ready. And—a bath. Hot. What else can I do for you?”   
She got a very evil look on what had been a reasonably sweet face. “Sing to me.”   
He went blank again. “What?”  
“This person would like to hear a song. Something soothing from her childhood. Sing to me,” she made the last a sharp order. She snatched a pillow from the folding bed and tossed it on the floor. “And show some respect!”   
Aya had a stubborn moment, but swallowed his pride and lowered himself to his knees, thankful that his uniform slacks were not as constricting as his jeans. He just hoped Mizugami-san had about the same tastes as his little sister had.   
He was going to kill Crawford. 

@ @ @

“As you can see, I have not died, been horribly injured or even disfigured,” Chieko said, washing her hands and arms one last time as her husband stood there with his arms crossed, looking at her.   
He smiled a little. “No, you seem to be enjoying yourself even more than usual. Which in a way, is quite scary.”   
She looked at him, toweling off the water. “Now you see, you tend to compartmentalize the fact that I’m in the habit of cutting open and sewing up people on a fairly regular basis, despite the fact that I know where you sleep. But, if that makes you feel better…?” she grinned at him wickedly.   
“Are these people an asset?” he asked quietly, aware they were in a canvas walled tent and might be spied on easily. That they switched back and forth between Japanese at home and Swiss dialect German at work made it a priority to remember to speak Japanese now.   
“Most definitely,” she hung up the towel on a little standing rack, rolled down her sleeves, and smoothed down her smock, checking for any stray spots of blood. “Physically, they are well formed, no congenital defects or obvious genetic diseases, and have been trained from youth for strength and grace according to the old established methods. We’ll have to wait for the tests for anything more indepth. Mentally, the ones I have had time to speak to show a nice level of intelligence and education, and the mental outlook is a positive self confidence. All that is lacking is an update to their historical education. What about you? Have you looked into the social situation? Dissention? Crime rate?”   
“One or two fist fights occasionally, according to the community record,” he said. “Usually over a woman or an insult. That seems to be the standard solution. Let the rivals have it out, and tell the woman to stop messing about, make up her mind. The economy is hand craft and barter for manufactured goods. The raw food supply is communal, no one has to steal a chicken or pig, so that’s settled. Everyone works and earns their keep until they are too old to. That just leaves good old fashioned rivalry. It’s the advantage of a small, homogenous society. They have to come to terms, or the majority will deal with them.”  
“What about the list of the missing persons from the Estancias?” she lead the way out the tent door to the open ‘air’ of the cavern. Somewhere up above, the Esset troops had opened a hole to get the larger stuff in and out, and the fresh, very cold air was just that; refreshing.   
“My men have been locating the abducted people and requesting that they contact their families,” he said. “As soon as the communications have been organized and are working correctly, there will be video calls.” He looked down at her with a smug smile. “I’m sure there will be some families happy to hear their grandchildren if not actually see them on a screen.”   
She sighed with a sad smile. “It will do them some good after all the years of black clouds hanging over.”  
He searched her face, seeing the tiredness there. Naturally she had sympathy for those people. They’d been devastated when the word came that Yuuji had been ‘blown up’. Having his vane, idiot son back was still like a miracle he couldn’t quite believe. He decided he needed to change the subject. “Well, when you’re ready, there’s food. I told the cooks lunch was amusing, but no further nonsense. This environment is already a little too closed for comfort.”  
Chieko smiled ruefully now. Men and their gas.

@ @ @ 

There was a quiet tap at the door of Greifeldt’s office and then Traugott came in, looking suitably apologetic. She waited just inside the open door.  
Greifeldt was on the phone. “What exactly is wrong with letting people live within their own cultural and social structures? Through out history in times of peace, people have had their ‘guilds’ or ‘gated communities’ for security sake and people have prospered. The Renaissance was born of it. People who don’t have to fear for their lives are always more intelligent, more productive. Unfortunately in most countries only the rich have that benefit.” He paused to listen.   
“‘No Go Zones’ just mean you have all your criminals in one place and you need to crack down on them. Of course it’s heavy handed, but in the long run—in the long run,” he said again slowly and with more emphasis, obviously over riding an interrupting objection, “It’s still a ‘gated’ community. People can feel safe in their own neighborhoods, where they know their neighbors and share a culture. And if that ‘culture’ threatens the well being of those around it, it must be eliminated for the sake of society.” He listened again. “Well of course it sounds like Socialism, what do you think ‘Nazi’ stands for?” he chuckled. “The difference is, real Democratic Socialists expect everyone to work, every man to turn his hand to a good labor and have a reason to be proud of his accomplishments. And for those who don’t want to work, the lazy leeches, what are work camps for? It worked for ancient Rome, until they put in lead plumbing.” He paused to listen again.   
“Anyway, we have digressed from the point of this call, and my secretary is giving me the stink eye,” he winked at Traugott to keep himself from getting killed. “I would put it down to wind sheer. It’s my understanding that there is this insane wind pattern down there in Antarctica that can peel the skin right off people, but it’s up to you,” he gave a little sigh. “I should think your congress would want to avoid yet another war at this point. On the other hand, our troops are already en mass on your continent, and we SS love a good war,” he said heartily. “Thins the herd, cuts down on that nasty population growth the Greenies are always bitching about,” he chuckled. “Win, win either way. Nice talking to you, too, Herr President.” He put the phone down. “Poor fellow doesn’t know he’s just banging his head against a one way mirror.”  
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Herr Greifeldt, but your nephew is on the phone,” Traugott said. “I’m afraid he doesn’t sound very happy about his new assignment,” she smiled, showing a lot of teeth.   
Greifeldt repressed a shudder. As an empath, he had perfected hiding his own emotion based reactions, but he wished she wouldn’t do that. It was an ever so subtle reminder that there was something not human about her. “I suppose I’ll have to talk him down. Go ahead and transfer the call. And it looks like I’ll have to have lunch at my desk. Things seem to be heating up with the Amis.”   
“Yes, Herr Greifeldt,” She smiled and turned, shutting the door behind her quietly.   
He relaxed a little in his well padded executive chair. The light on his phone blinked and he picked up with a silent sigh. “Hello, Victor, how are the children? Excited about the trip?” he said cheerfully. 


	11. Chapter 11

The temporary medical tents were finally empty; except for the ones occupied by Mizugami, and the woman and newborn recovering from a caesarian. The main tent, which normally would hold about ten patient beds and three exam rooms now provided a meeting room for Dr. Sarazawa, Grupenfuhrur Sarazawa Ishida, and Brad, who had ordered Schuldig to ‘go spy on everyone’ (mainly to have a break from the red head’s hyperactivity). They sat at Chieko’s temporary desk, a large folding white table, in uncomfortable folding metal chairs, with a coffee carafe, mugs, and the tablet equivalent of a pile of paper work.  
“I’ve ordered in a supply of vitamins and some standard modern medications, as well as immunizations,” Chieko said, going over the checklist on her tablet with Ishida and Brad. “They’ll need them to get past some of the modern variations of things this environment has protected them from. Also, I thought it would be a good idea to get hold of some frozen livestock fetuses and sperm. That stuff is easy to ship and will add a needed fresh up to the DNA of the herds here. I’m not an animal doctor, but it’s basically all the same; insert tab, fold B. I’ve also requested a fresh supply of seeds and enriched soil. They’ve done quite well using fish, but it’s getting tired. Mold spore content they brought in with them originally is high, and the crops are dwindling. Almost everything is fairly easy to transport, but the top soil will have to be brought in by the sleds. I’m told we can’t be helicoptering multi-ton pallets of dirt in the winds up there without waiting for a break, and it would take far too much time,” she looked at her husband. “Other than all that, it’s up to Mizugami-sama and these people.”  
Ishida looked around the rather barren tent, arms crossed, and sucked air through his teeth. “Not my idea of a paradise, but if the majority of them want to stay here, Esset will support them. Herr Greifeldt has told the Amis and the UN that as this colony was established without effect to any indigenous population or native species, and before anyone else claimed this region, they have no right to tell us to go. They’d have more footing to tell the European population to get out of Australia. ‘Ultima Thule’ belongs to Esset.”  
“Joy,” Brad said sardonically.  
“It’s a start,” Ishida looked at him with a slight smile. “You might say we have the world by the tail.”  
“More like its frozen ass. How is Mizugami doing, anyway?” Brad asked Chieko.  
“Well,” she said, frowning slightly at the puzzle this presented. “As frustrating as it is, the only reference to her condition is her own word for it. Because the ‘host’ is not an Esset member, I have no ready access to previous medical records. Physically, the host must have been quite healthy, or she would not be here on this mission. I believe it’s more a question of the amount of power available to the ‘being’ to draw from the environment. When Fujimiya transferred the essence of the kami to Traugott, there was a suitable ‘infrastructure’. I’m going by physics, not religion,” she shrugged a bit helplessly.  
“She was able to take over the entire school, the buildings and property it sat on before inhabiting the host,” Brad said thoughtfully.  
“Perhaps because the school is thought of by a vast number of people, including the local populace of the nearby city, as a certain institution, where as this is an isolated village with a particular belief system?” Ishida offered.  
“Also the school has up to date electrical connections, Traugott was able to communicate through them before she had—well—Traugott. I don’t know what these beings really are, but they are a pain in the butt,” Brad stated. “The way I see it, we have to connect things; the old wiring, the generators, and the new equipment, but there’s also the resistance factor from the die-hard Volk. She mentioned that the people are hostile to her, or perhaps just to the Japanese contingent. I’ve got Fujimiya playing nursemaid until we can deal with that, or she decides to do something on her own, which might not be such a good idea, given what we know of this particular ‘kami’s’ past.”  
“I’ve read Naoe’s report,” Ishida said. “Frankly, I know very little about Shinto. My parents were scientists, they didn’t bring more than a passing habit of the religion with them. You give the house hold shrine a bit of rice and sake, watch the sunrise on New Year’s Day, and that’s that. We did take the boy to the Shrine in Ise for his fifth year presentation.”  
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Chieko sipped her coffee and set it down. “The beings we call ‘Kami’ seem to be a sort of radiative life force. According to legend, in the beginning, they formed, and what ever they touched in the physical world came to life at their whim, until that power was spread thin through out the created offspring, one way or another. That they can use electrical connections, and affect plant life in their vicinity, points to a certain form of fluid power—but that’s all I can get out of it. As a doctor, it annoys me, but they are a life force. And that particular life force requires fuel. They want to be well thought of and offered sustenance, even if its not consumed physically. That we Japanese are disposed from historical times to consider them as some sort of uber-ancestor points to that connection. However,” she held up a finger. “When you look at the circumstances of other island dwellers, we’ve done quite well. Except in times when the ‘old religion’ was set aside for Buddhism, or even Christianity. When the ‘balance’ between the people and Kami was broken.” She frowned slightly at this thought.  
“Creepy,” Brad was trying very hard not to think about what he had seen. He really did not want to have religious discussions regarding the Kami, so much as make it behave so that he could go on about his life without having to think about it.  
Chieko looked at him. “Just like the little parasites in your guts that help you digest your food. It’s not so creepy, people can get very sick when they don’t have those symbionts.”  
“Perhaps that is the way we need to approach this,” Ishida mused. “Island dwellers.” He looked at them each in turn with the sly smile his son had inherited. “Island dwellers have to get along. They develop a particular social structure. We throw a luau, a matsuri. Get every one liquored up and feeling copacetic. Germans love beer, Japanese love sake, pour it on. Community games and food.”  
“Trust a man to come up with a drunken orgy as a solution,” Chieko said disapprovingly. “Even worse coming from an Officer of the Law.”  
Ishida smirked at his wife. “It does have a history of working, Doctor. Just like bed rest and chicken soup.”  
Brad thought this over, looking down at his cup to conceal his eyes momentarily while he checked. “It might work,” he looked up again. Actually, it was a bit scary how well it would work, but there it was.  
Then he realized both Yuuji’s parents were giving him the suspicious eye.  
Ishida set his coffee cup down and laced his fingers together on the table top, then cleared his throat and looked at Brad gravely. “You might have confided in the Council that Schuldig has removed the block on your talent.”

@ @ @

“Was he very mad?” Schuldig asked, feeling a bit wobbly inside. Under the rule of the Elders, this was something that would have lead to him being painfully executed, if not tortured, left brain dead, and then painfully executed. He’d spent far too much of his young life being terrified of heading down that path, always ‘guilty’ of something. In a way, he supposed that was why he clung to his inadvertent nickname. If he always admitted to ‘being guilty’, how could they accuse him of thinking he was ‘guilty’ of something?  
“No, just—disappointed,” Brad frowned, taking off the annoying uniform jacket and so unlike himself, throwing it at the sole folding chair in the tent. At least they were not being forced to camp up on the ice. On the other hand, there was very little privacy in a canvas tent; even if it was set up as far from the main part of the ‘village’ as possible. Not trusting the village elders, Ishida had ordered a schedule of guards, so they either risked being over heard by the villagers (the kids were like flies for being nosy, and why not, these people were from ‘another world’ and worthy of curiosity) or their own people; quite a majority of whom were ‘old school’ when it came to—certain things. “I had to explain a few things. And promise not to try and wring Fujimiya’s neck,” he snarled, pumping water into the wash stand.  
Each tent was equipped with a basin stand on a water tank that then drained into the tank of a portable toilet. He was not pleased with the little five by seven mirror hanging on the hook, but it was enough to get his hair properly put in its place, and a certain red head shaved, if he went through enough gyrations to get both sides in view. One just had to remember to watch the greywater tank and make sure it got disposed of before it hit the overflow level. Brad did not like camping. His idea of roughing it was no less than a 3 star hotel in one of the slightly less reputable civilized countries. Such things as tarantulas on the pillow, scorpions in the boot, and gods forbid, snakes in the bath, were absolutely unacceptable.  
He stripped his shirt off and tossed that in a pop-up laundry hamper, followed by his undershirt; once again, not like him. Normally he would fold things so that they took up less room. This was making Schuldig even more nervous, because it meant Brad was truly angry. “Um,” he said aloud, not daring to try reading Brad’s mind.  
“’Um’?” Brad said sarcastically around the wash cloth.  
“Well,” Schuldig sat down on one of the flimsy folding cots. (Apparently fancy portable washbasin/toilets meant good old fashioned wooden folding cots rather than the new steel frame ones with the ‘luxury’ four inch thick foam mattresses.) “We’ve found the place, the flying thingies have been collected, you’ve let yet another scary alien being loose on an unsuspecting populace, and here we are. Mission accomplished. Now what?”  
Brad rinsed his face and grabbed a towel from the hook on a nearby tent post. “Sarazawa Ishida wants to solidify relations by having a party,” he said dryly. “Sort of a cross between a matsuri and Oktoberfest or something like that, in the interests of ‘community togetherness’. Which should settle Mizugami in.” The towel, he hung up. “Unless of course, she actually likes having Fujimiya groveling at her feet 24/7,” he sneered.  
Schuldig was looking at Brad’s bare torso, all angry uptight muscle and sexy bare skin. “Um,” he said again, this time with a smile.  
Brad frowned at him. “Not. Happening. Even if you make everyone forget what ever embarrassing noise you make, I’m not in the mood.”  
“You should get in the mood,” Schuldig advised. “It might do you some good.”  
“That is your answer to everything,” Brad informed him, going to look in a duffle bag for a clean t-shirt and shirt. “Mine is to shoot people. If I can’t have my way, you can’t have yours.”  
Schuldig pouted mockingly, then opened his mouth, obviously with another one of his bright ideas to propose.  
“And before you say anything utterly stupid, remember that news article you commented on a few weeks ago? Blew the silly bitch’s brains right out,” Brad pulled the t-shirt over his head. “Not that that would affect my ability to perform ever again, but it’s so damned hard to find a decent telepath.”  
Schuldig frowned. “I think I’ll go up top side and roll in the snow, then.”  
“Good idea,” Brad slithered into his clean t-shirt. 

@ @ @

As with all really good booze ups, the next morning was a special suburb of memory glitched Hell. Brad woke to an aching head, a desert dry mouth, and a strange sensation in his lower limbs. For a moment, panic tried to crawl up his spine. Then he realized it was just that Schuldig had somehow managed to get tangled up in his legs. A little thinking about how that had happened rather embarrassed him, though he would never admit it to anyone else. Ever. On pain of (their) death.  
He located a shoulder and gently shoved, managing to half crawl out of the pile of sleeping bags on the floor, noting that the folding camp beds had been shoved over haphazardly into a tangled pile of their own. What had woke him was a general hub-bub outside. You would think people who had been drinking vast quantities the night before would have the decency to keep quiet.  
He looked down. He was naked. Proceed with precaution.  
He went over to the ‘door’, unzipped it just enough to fold down the top of the flap and looked out toward the noise. No glasses. He closed his eyes and used his talent to ‘see’ a few seconds into the future.  
Oh.  
“Well, that did work to a certain point,” he muttered, opening his eyes. He rubbed the sleep from one eye, and turned to squint down at the sprawl of equally naked red head on the floor. Now if only there were a coffee maker in this canvas and stick dump. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and stepped over the pile of sexy to get to the duffle bag his clothing was in. He had no idea of where his glasses were.  
“Full moon,” a sleep rough voice said behind and below him as he pumped water into the basin.  
“I’m surprised you’re still alive,” Brad responded, having located his glasses in the wash basin. He shook the water off them. He sighed and found the towel to wipe them dry with, examining them carefully. At least they were not damaged in any way. He put them on and looked down. Yes, much better.  
Schuldig pulled a pillow over his head. “Shoot them all,” he complained.  
“Mizugami wouldn’t like that,” Brad informed him, stepping over him to upright the folding chair. He put on underwear, socks and pants, then sat down to pull on his boots, momentarily sparing a sock covered foot to give Schuldig’s bare ass a shove. “Get off the floor, you loon. This tent is too small to have a lumpy orangutan rug.”  
Schuldig’s answer was to loudly pass gas. “You did not hear that,” he stated primly, muffled by the pillow.  
“I think the whole base did,” Brad prodded him again, this time with a boot heel. “Get up. That’s an order.”  
“Now I know what getting the boot really means,” Schuldig groaned and sat up, pushing his hair off his face. “It worked?” he asked, finally making sense of what he was picking up.  
“I would say so,” Brad smiled ruefully at the red headed mess on the floor. Maybe sex was a good answer after all. He reversed order on buttoning his shirt.

@ @ @ 

“It is a paradise,” Martz blinked in surprise as they entered the cavern, his mouth hanging open a bit until his wife reached over and pushed his chin up to close it. His eyes continued to rove in amazement.  
The vast bare rock and concrete of the base was now moderately festooned with plant growth. Over night, the somewhat weak and spindly crops had gathered strength and grown healthier, taller. Plants on vines had outdone themselves; squash and cucumbers, green beans, peas, had out run their stakes. Fruit trees had expanded their limbs, put out more leaves, tiny buds promising another crop of fruit. A brighter light descended from the exposed ice section of ‘ceiling’, impurities in the ice causing a pattern of rays and rainbow colors.  
“Boys, go play,” Elena gave her two pre-teens a little shove with each hand. “And don’t get into any fights!” she called after them as they trotted off like good little soldiers on a mission. “Use your words!” she called a little louder.  
“Sieg Heil,” Schuldig muttered sarcastically to Brad. “She’s going to give old Hanshel fits.”  
“If Miszugami doesn’t play the tentacle card on him first,” Brad murmured back. For once in his life he actually found himself feeling sorry for someone, but it was only momentary insanity, probably brought on by the hangover ‘illicit sex’ and coffee had not quite abated.  
“How is this possible?” Martz asked, his voice hushed as if it were some sort of cathedral.  
“Determination and a volcanic hot spring,” Brad stated irritably. “Sarazawa, take them to their assigned tent.”  
Yuuji gave him a warning look, then smiled with his normal warmth at the two. “They’ve set up a more serious tent for your family until something can be built, but it will be a bit rough for a while.”  
“Oh, we go camping quite a lot,” Frau Martz assured him, picking up a small dog carrier, the companion to which was in her husband’s care. “But what is used for fuel? Surely they can’t be chopping up trees?”  
“I have no idea,” Sarazawa admitted. “But come, this way.”  
Schuldig elbowed Brad unnecessarily as the two followed Yuuji. On their backs were packs containing the infant twins. “Scary.”  
The twins were staring back at them, very serious looks on their little Churchillian faces.  
“They’re telepaths?”  
“They’re looped. For now,” Schuldig said quietly. “Let’s just hope they have parents who can handle them.”  
Brad looked at him curiously. “What ever happened to your parents?”  
Schuldig blinked. “After all this time, you ask me?” his voice was still quiet, but now just a little strained.  
Brad waited for an answer as blandly as possible, not wanting to trigger a shit storm.  
“All those electric shocks,” Schuldig tapped his head. “Now and then, I remember to think about finding out about them, but it slips my mind when something better comes along,” he grinned at Brad.  
“Ah,” Brad said, looking at Yuuji’s tall narrow back as he walked away. Not that he cared that much, but sometimes he wondered if things had gone differently, what sort of person he himself would be. 

@ @ @ 

Brad bowed politely to the creature he had dumped on the woman. She had stood as he entered, possibly to make the best of her petite height. “Mizugami-sama,” he was careful to use the respectful address. He straightened and looked her in the eyes. Like Mephisto, her dark eyes had a gilded sheen, rather than the silver hosts with lighter colored eyes developed. He wondered about that sometimes, ever since he had been told his talent changed the color of his own irises as the little tiny muscles contracted to dilate his pupils. If there was anything he had learned when dealing with Japanese, it was that silence was the best course of conversation.  
She looked him over skeptically. “Well?” she stated.  
He was thinking he had not pulled this persona out since—eugh—Takatori. “Thank you for your blessings on this community?” he added this last as a question, because he really could not resist, despite the fact that he might end up fertilizer so fast he would probably feel lit for moments after molecular dissolution.  
Her eyes narrowed at him.  
He looked around the tent. “Where is Fujimiya?” he asked somewhat hesitantly. Did one dare hope? Did one feel sorry for Yuuji?  
“Most likely sleeping off the effects of last night’s debauch,” she answered succinctly. “Have the saucer sections been stowed on the ship?”  
“As far as I know, the engineering contingent has completed the task, yes,” he said, wondering about the ‘debauch’ part.  
“I require the diagrams and schematics. I wish to study them if I am to remain here.”  
“Are you—okay?” he asked carefully.  
“You question my personality variation?” Her tone was cool.  
“Well—yes,” he frowned slightly. “Nurse and Traugott are quite alike. You are—more affected by your host?”  
“Not all children resemble their parents,” she moved to sit down in a folding camp chair. “If you must know, not all integrations are happy. This host is passive aggressive to a fault, and I am having to work harder to instill a sense of true confidence below the surface bluster. However, we are now pleased with this form, it is—more subversive,” her expression was thoughtful at the moment.  
“I’ll see to it Grupenfuhrur Sarazawa is informed of your request,” Brad said, suddenly wanting to flee. When a female started thinking about advantages, it was fight or flight time, and he did not think shooting her would get him anywhere at this point. “I think Dr. Sarazawa has some plans that will help with your further integration into the community. I will ask her to report to you sometime today.” Such as ‘day’ was down here. He bowed and backed out, not willing to turn his back on her, and sticking to what damned little he knew of the Shinto formal procedures. He was beginning to think he would have to do some research on that, for survival reasons.  
Outside the tent, he had to chuckle to himself a little. He wondered if those old bastards would be proud of him. After all, he had accomplished three times what they had planned to do, with out so much as an idiotic ritual.

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

Aya woke to find Yuuji was not in their tent.  He sat up, rubbing the back of his head and trying to think.  He was always groggy in the morning, but he also was not at all good at holding alcohol.  He remembered vaguely mixing sake with beer, and his paranormal ‘luck’ was probably the only reason he was still alive.  He stood up and immediately fell to his knees with dizziness.    
Okaaay.    
He made a sensible decision, and crawled to the wash stand/toilet thing.  Eventually, he somehow got washed up and found clothes.  A few bottled waters went down, and after throwing up the first one or two, the ones after that stayed put. and he started to feel less like a zombie and more like—not-a-zombie.    
He very particularly made sure his pants were zipped and buttoned.  He missed his jeans.  Hell, he missed Yuuji’s jeans.  But the rules were: on duty, wear the uniform.  And he had been informed by Crawford (whom he was going to kill) that he was on duty all the damned time until further notice.  He hoped Mizugami-sama would not keep him at her beck and call all day today again.  He sighed.    
Yesterday, he had had to wait for a helicopter to take him back to the ship to get her ‘proper’ clothing, then wait for the winds to settle down enough to allow the copter to fly back.  She had not been happy about the amount of time it had taken.  He hadn’t seen Yuuji until the party that ‘evening’, and now the asshole had woken up and left him on his own again.  He did not like to think of himself as being so dependent, but there was the issue of Yuuji’s addictive—Yuuji-ness.    
He tried for a third time to button up his uniform jacket the correct way.   He was pretty certain he had not had sex last night.  He did remember thinking how awfully sexy Yuuji’s lascivious smile was, as the evil bastard filled up his beer mug again and that was the last he had conscious memory of.    
Yuuji.    
Okay, time to pull himself together.  Stupid hat.  Boots.  Where were his boots?    
He found them, one in one corner, the other behind the folding laundry hamper.  The hamper was getting pretty full.  He did not relish how that was going to get dealt with.  He had seen the ‘village’ women working an old fashioned mangle wringer in passing.  It explained why there was always a cluster of girls sewing buttons back on.  They had to be removed before things would be washed or end up crushed in the mangle.  A memory of his maternal grandparent’s country house came back for some reason; the old rust and white enamel mangle washer, once the innovative technological pride of a wealthy family, festooned with climbing flower vines of yellow and blue in the side yard where the washing had been hung.  There had been little pink and white carnations in the main barrel that smelled so sweet.  He remember asking what the strange planter was, and being told about it.  He hadn’t thought of his grandmother in a long time.    
He used to like flowers well enough.  When they were just flowers.    
His stomach gave a half hearted gurgle, not sure it wanted food or was just begging to be left to die.  He needed to find breakfast.  Something harmless and bland, like one of those chalky protein drinks.    
And then he would go see what her ‘celestial majesty’ wanted today, he thought grimly.  He had done everything from sing and recite classical poetry, to washing and combing her hair, which had gotten annoyingly longer and tangled in the process.  He had the feeling she was seeing just how far she could push him before he snapped and gave her an excuse to eat him, but that could just be his normal paranoia.  

@     @     @  

Naturally, Aya thought, spotting Yuuji once again practically in Crawford’s back pocket.  Never mind that that Schuldig was standing right there as well, Yuuji was way too close.  Flirting again.  He could tell.  The man was breathing.    
Aya walked over to them, and waited to be acknowledged.  “Ah. Hem,” he stated after two long minutes.  
Yuuji looked at him and grinned.  Aya knew that grin.  It was the oh-I-got-caught-quick-look-innocent grin.  Aya glared at him.   
“Good morning, Sunshine,” Yuuji purred and slipped a finger under a momiage to give a little tug.  
Before Aya could remember to draw breath to say anything, Crawford interrupted.    
“Take this thumb drive to Mizugami-sama,” he held it up.  “It’s the old diagrams and data along with the new photographs during dismantling that Nagi was able to collect so far on the saucers.”  
Aya was glad he wore gloves.  He took it with the very tips of his fingers.  “Anything else?” he said coldly.  
“I’m sure she’ll find things to keep you busy, Fujimiya,” Brad said, that evil bastard gleam in his eyes.  “She seems to be a far more pleasant mood this morning.  Don’t do anything to ruin it,” the emphasis was glacial.  
“I’ll just go with him,” Yuuji said, excusing himself from what ever conversation they had been having.  
“Do that,” Crawford said with that little smirk of his.    
Aya couldn’t tell if he were being sarcastic or snide, but it sure sounded unnecessary.  As he walked away, he heard the telepath’s snicker.  “I’m going to kill them both,” he stated.  
“No, you are not,” Yuuji admonished.  “Stop being so anti-social, we were only having a conversation about the situation with the Yanks.”  
“Yeah, and I’ve seen you having the same ‘conversation’ with women who came into the flower shop, all looking deep into their eyes, leaning a little closer, smiling like that,” he glared at him yet again.    
“What?  Aya, it’s just me!” Yuuji was suddenly angry, “Honestly, if I can’t be myself around old friends, when can I be?  It’s bad enough I’m constantly fighting this ‘thing’ in my head, but are you going to punish me for the few times I’ve been able to forget and be myself lately?”   
Whoah….this was not good.  Aya immediately felt sorry he’d said anything.    
Yuuji grabbed him by the upper arm and turned him to grab the other one, looking down into his eyes.  At first Aya thought there was going to be a fight, but no.  “I gave Brad up for you, Aya,” Yuuji said quietly.  “Even though every time I look at you, I have to fight off Kudoh’s damned addictions, I gave him up for you.”  
Aya felt his jaw work, but he could think of nothing to say.    
Yuuji loosened his grip a little, looking more frustrated than angry now.  “Lighten the fuck up, Aya, before you ruin this for both of us,” he pleaded. Aya wanted to hold him, but where they were right now, it was bad enough Yuuji was so close and looking at him the way he was.  He swallowed hard and tried to step back, his eyes ranging the possible witnesses.    
Yuuji let him go, reading the signals, but not happy.    
“I’m—sorry, I’m just—it’s jealousy,” Aya admitted remorsefully.  “I’ll try not to be so awful about it.”  
Yuuji sighed sharply.  “Even if I could kiss you right now, I wouldn’t,” he said.  “I wouldn’t want you to think I was trying to control you.  Aya, Aya, Aya, for godsakes, trust me.”  
Aya looked into those hazel green eyes.  He wanted to believe Yuuji.  But something deep inside warned him not to.  Every time he wanted to, he felt he couldn’t.  And maybe it was because he felt it deep inside himself, that he didn’t deserve this, to be loved.  “I guess we both have our flaws,” he said softly.  
“I’ll keep mine under control if you keep yours,” Yuuji told him in a lighter tone, giving him a pat on the upper arm and glancing around.    
That was part of the problem.  Yuuji was always so swift to say something, always ahead in the game.  Always—manipulative.    
And maybe that was it; not flirting, no, manipulative.   
Aya sighed.  Maybe that was the whole of it.  Yuuji manipulated people like a snake crawled on it’s belly, it was ‘him’.  And as much as Aya didn’t like sharing that side of this man with everyone else on the fucking planet, he had to admit, he got the best of it.  His lips did a little shrug of their own.  “Okay,” he said quietly.    
Those eyes looked through him, then Yuuji smiled and it was like the sun coming out from behind clouds.  “And I didn’t use any talent on you,” he said teasingly.  
“That’s what you think,” Aya said ruefully, and turned to head toward Mizugami’s tent.  

@     @     @   

“What are you laughing about?” Brad asked Schuldig, who was watching Yuuji and Fujimiya walk away.    
Schuldig’s bright Tiffany blue eyes focused on him.  “Just watching your zombie ex-boyfriend avoid a nuclear meltdown.  I always thought he was a hot mess before as Kudoh, but now that I know what he’s really like; respect.  He really has no barriers to fucking with people’s minds.” He chuckled richly again.  
Brad laughed curtly.  “He does have more than his share of nerve.  But that isn’t getting us out of here.  Go mind someone else’s business while I have a few words with Grupenfuhrur Sarazawa.  If I can convince him the military can take over from here, we might get a less boring assignment.”  
“One where we get to kill people?” Schuldig asked brightly.  
Brad raised an eyebrow.  “Maybe,” he said teasingly.  “Now scram.  I don’t want Sarazawa senior thinking I’m using you to get him to give me what I want.”  
“Why not?” Schuldig asked, his eyes caressing Brad’s face. “You know I can fix it so he wouldn’t even know it was me doing his thinking for him.”  
Brad put a finger to his chin, looking up in mock thoughtfulness.  “What was that word you used?  ‘Respect’?” he looked at the red head again.  “Infrastructure, Schuldig.  We need infrastructure to enjoy life.  Just not this particular one,” he growled a little, looking around.  “I want out of this retro Vernian nightmare and back to civilization.” 

@     @     @   

Aya was a little surprised at the changes in the tent Mizugami had taken up residence in.  Rather than the plant ridden office of Traugott back at Rosencruz, this variation went for the cold and technical. There was an old metal office desk; two modern laptops on it, along with some external drives.  A large dry erase board stood ready, and a stack of Pelican technical equipment hard cases stood near the door way, one of them laying open with a machine covered in digital screens and dials.  Another one of the ubiquitous folding white tables held a printer and some other complicated machines he did not know enough about to identify. Mizugami was seated behind the desk, sipping at a coffee cup.  
“It’s about damned time,” she said calmly, looking up and then past him.  “Ah, Sarazawa Yuuji.  Have you come to replace your boyfriend?”  
Aya felt the bottom drop out of his already messed up stomach.  He looked at Yuuji in terror.  
“The engineering team is working on getting the last of the communications set up, and replacing the generators,” Yuuji said, not the least bit upset by the connotations of her statement.  “You should be able to rely on the internet and satellite feed now.  Aya,” he nudged him in the side of his boot with the tip of his own.  
Aya remembered to bow quickly, and formally laid the flash drive on the desk top with both hands.  “The schematics you wanted, Mizugami-sama,” he said, feeling quite awkward again.  (The whole painting her toenails thing was something he would much rather never think of again, and he hoped she would not want a different color today.)    
She smiled at him, and it was the same scary smile Aya had seen on Nurse and Traugott.  Way too many teeth involved.  “You really do have no sense of humor, do you?”  As with Trugott, her voice was cold but teasing, like a tiger talking to dinner as it wriggled under it’s paw.    
Aya lost all hope.  What new torture was she going to hit him with next?    
She plugged the flash drive into the side of the laptop and waited for it to come up with the file folders on screen.   
“Actually, I was wondering if I could have him back,” Yuuji said, making Aya want to just die then and there.  “Herr Martz is here as Esset liaison for the colony or base or what ever it’s going to be designated, and our team will most likely be reassigned elsewhere soon.  Plus, I’m dreadfully fond of Mr. Deadpan here.”  
“Take him,” she flicked a dismissive hand, the computer screen reflected in her eyes.  “As entertaining as he is, I have work to do.”  She pursed her lips slightly, clicking on the USB mouse to enlarge something on the screen.      
Yuuji waited a moment, then looked at Aya.  “Will there be anything else, Mizugami-sama?”  
“What?” She looked distracted, then irritated. “No.” She went back to flicking through files on the screen.    
Yuuji nodded toward the door at Aya, then led the way out.  

@   @   @

The team stood at parade rest before Grupenfuhrur Sarazawa, who sat down behind the folding table that acted as a desk in the main operations tent.  “In the upheaval caused by the war, certain wealthy individuals who in the past were associated with the NGOs have set up the equivalent of a feudal barony.  Having gathered a following by offering security for subservience, they now refuse to let people go free.  Esset had been specifically requested to intervene in this situation by the Council of Sovereign Nations.  It is not only the families of the captives petitioning their governments concerned here, there are strong indications something more sinister is brewing.    
“Now, it is not the job of Esset to care for those who are genetically feeble, fundamentally stupid, or just insist on constantly making bad decisions, however much sympathy we may have for the innocents involved; but the Brotherhood investigated the situation and determined it was just ‘not a happy’,” he looked grim.    
“Team Grun was sent in.  Five days ago, every last member of Grun, six level B and C talents with an exemplary record of success in infiltration, went silent.  Their tracking chips have gone dead.  I received word this morning that we have now lost track of Team Rot; a strike team of four level A talents formed while you lot were AWOL in Shinjuku for five years.  It is the Reichsfuhrer’s opinion that we have lost the lives of ten very valuable level A, B and C talents.  Gentlemen, and Lady,” he flicked a glance at Tot.  “It’s personal now.”    
“Shit,” Brad said under his breath.    
Sarazawa Ishida looked at him somewhat coldly.  “This might have been avoided, Crawford,” he said almost as quietly.  “However we are in the here and now, and the mess is yours to clean up. The sentence is scorched earth.  All evidence of wrong doing will be recorded for the CSN, minus any research and samples of extraordinary technical and biological weapons.  If possible, you will locate our missing people and evidence of what happened to them.  You will be ready to move out in three hours, to remain on standby until the weather allows a helicopter to remove you from Antarctica. The data previously gathered will be transmitted to your devices top side.”

@     @     @  

As the helicopter finally rose above the gusts of wind blown snow, Schuldig was looking down from the window seat.  You would never know what was under all that damned white death, let alone a whole colony of people from over half a century past.  “Well, vacation is over,” he said over the noise of the ‘copter and settled back with some satisfaction.    
“Thank the gods,” Yuuji exhaled.  “I’ve been wanting to kill someone for weeks.”   
Brad looked at him with a wincing smile, then sighed deeply.  “Your old man certainly made it clear I’m in the poo, didn’t he?” He took the annoying peaked hat off and pushed his hair back.     
“Oh, yes.  You should have seen this coming, Crawford,” Yuuji said with mock seriousness, imitating his father.  “There isn’t a one of us who isn’t just a tool of the Brotherhood, bred and born, and you should have known better.  They want you sitting on that throne, ‘Oracle’, not out running about willy-nilly, doing as you please with what you so arrogantly think is ‘your’ life,” he frowned at his hands clasped between his knees.  “At least he kept us all together.  I hate to say it, but Totto and I are the weak ends in this,” he looked at Brad.  “I’m too used to going in on my own without partners to look after, and Tot hasn’t had the kind of covert training the rest have.”  (In fact, Yuuji thought, ‘covert’ wasn’t in the girl’s dictionary.  Unless some one had seriously changed the definition of ‘covert’ to candy pink sparkles with frothy white ruffles and what amounted to neon white hair in long, bouncy ringlets.) You’re going to have to determine how best to put us into play.”  
“Leadership,” Brad leaned his head back on what there was of the utilitarian seat to do so and closed his eyes, sighing deeply again.  “Sometimes I wonder if we came back to the right ‘time’ at all.  What if this is a timeline that wouldn’t have happened at all if we had gotten out of Shinjuku at ‘our’ original time.”    
“What is it you are always saying, the past is gone,” Schuldig reminded him with a sour face.  “But I wonder where exactly we would be now if not for the time change.”  (He remembered the scene of horrific flames and the blood running down Brad’s face in the nightmare.)  
“Probably right here, only five years older,” Nagi said, not liking this talk.  “Do we have the data yet?”  
“Let’s wait until we get back to the ship,” Brad said.    
“We’re not going to the ship, Herr Oberstleutnant,” the pilot informed him, unable to ignore the necessarily loud talk over the engine noise.  “We’ll be landing at Punto Arenas, where you’ll be meeting a passenger jet.”    
“Oh shit.  My luggage,” Schuldig grumped.    
Yuuji rolled his eyes.  “I’ll message Mum to see to it.” He looked at Aya who was looking, as usual, pissed off at the nuclear level.  “Damn it, they left your katana on the ship!” he suddenly realized.    
Aya scowled.  “Make it stop at the ship,” he growled dangerously.  
“Pilot,” Crawford called to get the man’s attention. “I’m ordering you to stop at the ship.”  
“If I can, Herr Oberstleutnant,” the pilot said doubtfully with hesitant respect.  “This wind….” The ‘copter was bucking and straining to stay on course.  
“We will land,” Nagi stated, giving the helicopter a little test wiggling about, up down, sideways.  “I can handle it,” he told Brad.  “Just like driving a car,” he grinned over the pilot’s cursing.    
Yuuji looked at Brad curiously.  “Are you being—‘nice’?” he asked warily.    
“Just saving your life,” Brad smirked.  “And,” he glanced at Schuldig.  “If I don’t retrieve his collection of vintage hippy clothing, I’ll never hear the end of it,” his sardonic smile turned into a frown.    
Schuldig gave Brad a saccharine sweet smile and patted him on the knee.  “Love you too, mein mann,”  
Yuuji did not want to know what might have end up in more mayhem.  Loosing Aya’s katana or the lunatic red head’s tie dyed t-shirts and shreddy bell bottom jeans.  


End file.
